Flip Turn
by AzelmaRoark
Summary: Bruce Wayne is famous for doing the impossible, but coaching seven year olds might be more than he bargained for. Alternate Universe.
1. Where's Coach Babs?

_I'm still questioning my sanity in that I didn't immediately file this idea under Things Azelma Should Definitely Not Write, but sue me, I'm writing it anyway. This is massively AU. Set in a reality with no superheroes, and most of the characters have been de-aged quite a bit. And since they can't be superheroes, they find other things to occupy themselves, like…well, you'll find out. No, I haven't abandoned Bright Line and Cognitive Dissonance. I just wanted to try a different angle and I'm having fun so far. I can't promise exactly where this will go or for how long, but I do hope that you enjoy. Comments are, per usual, very welcome.

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**Flip Turn**

**Chapter One: Where's Coach Babs?

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Wally had been swimming since forever. He could practically walk around the pool with his eyes closed and not even bump into anything. Well, actually, he would probably be running, even though he technically wasn't allowed, because Wally thought that you shouldn't have to follow the rules if the rules were stupid. And anyway, he only got in trouble if somebody saw him, and nobody ever saw him.

But Wally knew the swimming pool. He knew everything about it, from the white starting blocks labeled 'one' through 'six' (four was the best) to the diving board that jutted over the deep end, on which Wally had split open his chin when he was three and had had to get stitches (it was cool). He could tell you everything that the big kids had written on the bathroom walls in permanent marker, could find all the anthills that hugged the big metal fence, and he knew how to go all the way to the bottom of the pool, even where it was ten and a half feet deep.

Except, Wally definitely didn't know what the big man in the white polo shirt was doing standing right in the middle of the starting blocks.

Or why he had a big frown on his face as if somebody had just cancelled recess—well, he looked kind of like the type of person who'd cancel recess _himself,_ actually.

Or why he was staring at Wally like he'd better get over there _right now_ or he was going to be in a lot of trouble.

"Umm, where's Coach Babs?" asked Wally as soon as he was close enough so it wouldn't be yelling.

The big man looked confused, then annoyed, then he went back to the cancelled-recess frown. "In case you haven't noticed, I'm not Coach Babs."

"Naw, really? 'Cos you're kind of not a girl," said a short, skinny boy with bright eyes and a high-pitched voice. He kept looking around, like he was trying to make sure that everybody had heard him. Wally had never seen him before.

"What's your name?" asked the big man.

"Gar," said the skinny boy. "That's what you can call me, anyway. I don't like my real one."

"Gar, for future reference, I don't appreciate interruptions," the big man growled, suddenly seeming even bigger than he had before. Gar flinched and backed away until he was pressed into the fence. "To answer your question," he continued as if he hadn't been interrupted, now addressing the entire circle of kids gathered around the starting blocks, "My name is Bruce Wayne. I will be in charge of this swim team for the next ten weeks."

Nobody said anything for a long moment. Finally, Wally decided that there had been way too much silence. "So, wait a minute, that means that you're our new _coach? _Aren't you, like, too old for that?"

He was answered with nervous laughter from the crowd and another frown from Bruce. An older girl poked Wally between the shoulder blades. "You idiot, that's _Bruce Wayne."_ Just when Wally was about to say that he _knew_ that because the man had just _said_ that, the girl continued. "He was in the Olympics. Got a gold in the 100 fly, 200 free, 200 back…umm…he got a lot of them. Anyway, you should shut up. If you make him mad, he might decide to leave."

Well. Wally had medals. Lots of them, and one of them was silver, so _there._

"Yes. That's what it means," said Coach Bruce. "We have also wasted two minutes having this conversation. Now. I want a 200 freestyle. Stronger swimmers in the front, please. Do not pull the lane rope; do not walk on the bottom; do not forget to do a flip turn."

Gar raised his hand, waving it around until Coach Bruce finally nodded. "Umm, but what if we don't know how to do that?"

"Then try your best." He looked away from Gar, indicating that the discussion was more than over.

A small boy with black hair was in the water before Coach Bruce finished speaking. He had blue eyes that Wally didn't get a good look at because he pulled his goggles down over them halfway into his dive. But the circle of kids didn't move. And didn't move. They all just stared, watching the boy as if entranced; Wally had certainly never seen anybody that eager to swim eight laps of the pool.

"I believe I spoke clearly enough—let's go, 200 freestyle. Anyone still on the pool deck in thirty seconds owes me thirty pushups."

That got _everyone _moving, and a good deal of them screaming, though Wally wasn't one of them because he didn't really care if Coach Bruce made him do pushups. He was really good at that, anyway. He'd wanted to stay on the deck and talk to Vic, who was finally swimming again this year, but Vic had already gotten in the pool so it was boring up here. Counting out the seconds to see how close he could get to thirty before he had to do pushups, he finally jumped in the water on twenty-nine.

Eight laps was a long way, but it was even longer when you kept being stopped by somebody who had to have everything _perfect._ And it wasn't Coach Bruce.

Something grabbed his foot. "You are _not _on the right side." Wally had ended up in the dark-haired boy's lane. It turned out to be a big mistake.

"Which one's the wrong side? And who do you think you are, anyway?"

"I'm Robin, and you're supposed to be on the _right_ side. If you're not, we'll all run into each other and it's a _safety hazard_." He was hardly out of breath, treading water effortlessly and glancing towards the other side of the pool with every other word, as if he couldn't spare ten seconds to explain this. Even though it seemed like he really did want to explain it.

"But how do I know which one's the right one if you won't tell me?"

Robin shook his head harshly. "No! Left and right; directions! As in, over _here."_ He pointed, wrist tense and rigid.

Oh. Well, no reason to get so upset about it. Wally knew about left and right; all he had to do was explain.

"What's the problem over there?" A big voice from the pool deck.

Robin's head jerked up instantly, and it kind of reminded Wally of a dog that had just graduated from obedience school. In a way that was a little scary. But Wally answered before he could, with the grin that almost always let him get away with anything. "He was telling me about left and right lanes. 'Cos I'm a safety hazard!"

For just a second, the corner of Coach Bruce's mouth twitched like he was going to smile, then he was back to the cancelled-recess look. "This can wait until after you finish your laps."

"But I just—"

"Robin. Focus."

Wally heard a barely audible sigh and then Robin was off again, seeming faster than before…and he was already kind of fast. Not appreciating being ignored but not knowing what else to do, Wally followed, and he was on the right side of the lane this time, thank you very much.

It took everyone else a long time to swim eight laps. Some of them probably didn't actually do eight, even, but Coach Bruce either didn't notice or decided not to get them in trouble. Wally had to surreptitiously stop Gar from doing any more than four because his face was bright red and he looked like he was ready to sink to the bottom of the pool and stay there for awhile. He stuck out a hand as Gar prepared to turn around, grabbing his wrist and shaking his head.

"Just stop," he said. "You're all tired."

Gar's eyes got really round for a second, and they were red around the edges because of the chlorine—he didn't bring goggles. Then, he laughed, though it sounded strange because he tried to fit it around all the gasping for breath and it didn't quite work. "I'm so not tired," he scoffed, grabbing the wall and hanging on tight. "I'm just really good at pretending."

_Liar, liar, pants on fire. _Wally shrugged. "Whatever you say. I'm Wally," he announced to the lane, mostly to make sure the new people heard him because he already knew everyone else. Smirking, he reached over and poked Robin, who had one hand on the bar underneath the starting block. "You're kind of weird. You're new, but you're fast. How come?"

Robin took off his goggles, letting them rest against his forehead. His eyes were _really_ blue. "I've been swimming before this."

"Where'd you swim?" asked Gar, breathing slightly less sporadic and face considering returning to its usual color.

"Just by myself," said Robin, staring down into the water.

"Yeah right." Wally did a back flip before he continued. "No way you got so good by yourself."

Appearing almost out of nowhere, Coach Bruce reached down and touched Robin's shoulder, and Wally noticed how big his hands were. "Finished?"

Robin nodded wordlessly, eyes locked on Coach Bruce, and then Wally figured it out. It was so obvious. They even looked alike, except Robin's eyes were different. As soon as he walked away, Wally leaned closer to Robin and whispered, "He's your dad, isn't he? You swam with _him,_ right?"

"Wow," Gar breathed.

Something flickered behind Robin's eyes, something painful and secret that he refused to recognize. "No," he said. "He's—I live with him."

"How come?" asked Gar, who was in the process of trying to drag himself out of the pool.

"I don't want to talk about it," said Robin, significantly less composed than he had been when he lectured Wally about the right side of the lane.

He was just about to tell Robin that it was fine, that whatever he didn't want to say could wait until later, when Coach Bruce told them all that they had to get out of the pool right now. Coach Bruce didn't have a whistle, but he didn't need one; something about the way he spoke made a whistle redundant. Holding a stopwatch in one hand and a clipboard in the other, his face left no room for argument, so Wally rolled his eyes and climbed out—but he went down to touch the bottom of the pool first.

Robin was boring since he didn't want to talk, so Wally started looking around for Vic, not really minding when Gar followed him, telling a really complicated-sounding story about a new game he had. Wally was always nice, especially to the new little kids like Gar, but one new little kid was enough. The concrete was boiling hot and Wally was wondering how much longer he was going to have to stand on it when he saw Vic, standing awkwardly in the back of the line behind lane six, seeming out of place and hesitant and a lot of other things that Vic had never been.

Wally grinned and waved. "Hey! You're back! It was so boring without you last year, I thought I was gonna die, did they fix your legs up okay and does it still really hurt a lot and do you have any cool scars?"

Vic's answering smile didn't quite reach his eyes. "They—"

"Alright, this is what we're doing," said Coach Bruce, and Vic stopped talking immediately, mouth snapping shut and attention totally focused. He'd never been like that before; Vic hadn't been exactly eager to break the rules, but he knew how to have fun, and he definitely wouldn't just let a coach—a new, _mean _coach—just shut him up like that.

Wally made a face at Coach Bruce when he wasn't looking.


	2. Not Guilty!

**Flip Turn**

**Chapter Two: Not Guilty!

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He had been hoping that no one would remember. Or, if they did, he'd at least been hoping that they wouldn't notice.

It was a stupid thing to wish for, really. Wally had noticed right after warm-up, and the energetic waving plus the loud demands to know if he was okay and if he had "any cool scars," meant that he most definitely remembered. Vic was going to answer—though he wasn't really sure what he was going to answer _with,_ because there was no way to sum up the past year into something you could yell across a pool deck—but the last thing he wanted to do was get on the new coach's bad side. And it seemed like it wouldn't be too hard to get on his bad side.

Coach Bruce. Vic had seen this guy on _television_. He remembered watching the Olympics last year while he was in the hospital, trying not to think about the huge bed and the tubes in his arm and that pointless monitor that always managed to set off a really annoying alarm at least once every hour…

They were supposed to be doing starts, though from the looks of some of the kids in Vic's lane, they weren't exactly aware of this. Coach Bruce had explained it—twice, and more irritably the second time—but he'd used too many big words and nobody in his lane (or the lane next to it) but Karen Beecher knew what was going on. Fortunately, she was first.

"First group, step up." Coach Bruce was writing something on his clipboard, pausing to ask a few of the kids to tell him their names.

Karen and a short boy with dark hair stepped onto the blocks. The other four lanes remained empty.

"Step _up,"_ Coach Bruce repeated. The tone got the other four kids up there. "Take your mark." Luckily, he was looking at his stopwatch so he didn't see that at least four out of the six swimmers didn't know what that meant. Karen knew. One foot on the edge of the block, one foot behind her, she crouched down to touch the edge lightly, head up and focused on the other end of the pool.

Two of the other kids saw what she was doing and mirrored it. The dark-haired boy clearly already knew. The other two just stood there, shuffling uncomfortably with their hands useless at their sides.

The whistle meant _go._ It took the other four at least a few seconds to figure this out. Vic felt himself take a step towards the blocks, almost without realizing it, mouth forming around an explanation, but stopped himself at the last moment and just watched.

They'd been told to swim freestyle. Four of them were swimming everything but freestyle. Vic was a little worried about the boy in lane two—he'd pushed his way to the front of the first empty lane he could get his hands on, saying something about going first—who didn't seem like he was going to make it to the other end. Looking closer, Vic recognized him as the kid who'd interrupted at the very beginning, Gar. There were always one or two on the team who weren't exactly strong swimmers, and Vic kept his eyes on them because the coach couldn't always watch _everyone._ He was pretty sure he'd be watching Gar this year.

Karen touched the wall a split second behind the boy with dark hair and she looked over in disbelief, thick curls trying to find their way out of her ponytail as she shook the water out of her ears. As she climbed neatly out of the pool, ignoring the ladder, she said something to the boy that Vic couldn't hear from twenty-five meters away. The rest of the kids had a long way to go. Coach Bruce glanced at his stopwatch in frustration.

A gentle prodding at his shoulder turned Vic's attention back to his own lane, and he looked down at an inhumanly tiny girl in a bright pink bikini. Her blonde hair was in two pigtails, which had been pulled back meticulously around her goggles with precision that was almost clinical. Her eyes were hidden by the goggles that she'd yet to remove, the careful way she held her head indicating that she was afraid to mess up her hair.

"Excuse me," said the girl. "But what are we _doing?"_

"Trials," said Vic, indicating Coach Bruce and his stopwatch. "He's timing us to see how fast we are right now. To see what he's working with."

The girl bit her lip. "Will we be in trouble if we're guilty?"

"Guilty?" Vic echoed uncertainly.

"If it's like a trial and we're guilty, will we be in trouble?" The girl's speech was getting faster, real fear wedged between the words.

The word had to run through his brain for a few seconds before realization hit him and he laughed. "No, no, not _that_ kind of trial. It just means that he wants to see how fast you are."

"I'm not fast," said the girl, picking at the strap of her bikini and avoiding his eyes. "It's not my fault, though; I've never been on a swim team before, so he can't get mad!"

"He won't be mad," Vic assured her, though he wasn't entirely confident of this himself. Coach Bruce did, indeed, look pretty aggravated as Gar finally found his way to the other end of the pool, tried without success to get out and finally had to use the ladder.

"Next group, step up." Coach Bruce reset his stopwatch and started asking for names.

"Terra," said the blonde girl when it was her turn, twisting her body around as if she was trying to see what he was writing about her. "I'm only six!" she added suddenly, holding up six fingers.

"Take your mark."

Terra turned her head to face Vic, her frantic expression easy enough to read even with the pink goggles over her eyes. "Oh no, I forgot to ask about—"

The whistle cut her off, and when she saw what the other kids were doing she followed suit, half-jumping, half-falling into the water with a loud splash that sounded painful.

Terra wasn't awful: her kick looked kind of funny to Vic and he was pretty sure you weren't supposed to stir up enough water to coat the sides of the pool, but she was having fun, at least after awhile. Maybe she'd forgotten about trials and being guilty and being only six. She finished third, right in front of the girl in the lane next to her, who had long, red hair that floated freely in the water without any attempt at restraining it. Terra waited for the other girl to get out of the pool before they walked back towards the blocks together, with Terra slowing to whisper something in her ear that made the girl laugh. Grinning when her eyes fell on Vic, Terra flashed him a thumbs-up sign.

"Next group up." And there was nobody in front of Vic to step up. This was the part he'd been dreading.

The starting block felt dormant and alien under his feet, something that had once been a source of familiarity and comfort but no longer—and the memory of what it used to be made everything even worse. Vic tried to breathe deeply but something was pressing on his lungs, something like a snake that would squeeze the life out of him, would make him fail exactly as much as he expected to. Once you got trapped in this kind of thinking, you were about to prove yourself right: Vic knew this, had listened to his father say it more times than he could remember, and yet he couldn't shake it, couldn't pull himself out of whatever…_hopelessness _he'd spiraled into.

"Take your mark."

Vic dropped his head and tried to turn his brain off, wishing that it too was a mechanical device like the pins in his legs, something that the doctor could cut into and maneuver at will. The water felt strange as he entered it, and it didn't stop feeling strange until he'd climbed out, cringing because he could sense Coach Bruce's disapproving stare on his back when he used the ladder—but Vic _couldn't _get out of the pool the right way; it _hurt_ when he tried. If he'd been Terra, he would have made sure that everybody knew exactly why, but he wasn't "only six," he was _ten,_ and you didn't do things like that when you were ten. Besides, looking for special privileges wasn't the way to get on the coach's good side. If there was a way.

The rest of practice passed without incident, Vic swimming several more trials and wishing that he didn't have to keep getting out at the ladder, wishing that his dive wasn't clumsy and uneven, wishing that his breaststroke kick was legal—because it wasn't, he could _feel _that it wasn't, oh god—and hoping that helping Terra and Gar and the other new kids would somehow make up for all of it.

The girl with the red hair had announced that her name was Starfire ("Actually, it is something else that you would not be able to say, but Starfire is what it means.") and that all the places she'd been swimming had been nothing like this one. Vic tried to explain about swim teams and chlorine and lane ropes but she seemed more interested in asking Terra where she'd gotten the butterfly clip that was currently keeping her long bangs from falling out of her pigtails ("I'm growing them out 'cos I don't like them anymore.").

Vic was glad when practice was over and he could finally sneak away and try to find his way out of the pool without finding anyone who knew him. He didn't want to talk about trials.

"Vic!"

He turned reluctantly to see Wally running at him full speed with only a haphazard glance towards the lifeguard stand to see if he was asking to be punished. "Hey, Vic!" Not even slightly out of breath, red hair clinging to the sides of his face, Wally continued without waiting for an answer. "Sorry we couldn't talk earlier—somebody must of put mud in the new coach's coffee or somethin', 'cos _man." _

"He's not that bad," said Vic with a non-committal shrug.

"Yeah right, try hideous." Wally ripped his goggles off his head, throwing them in the air and catching them behind his back. "Really, if you weren't here this year, I dunno what I'd do. It was bad enough without you last summer, even when we had Coach Babs who was actually nice, but evil coach of doom plus no Vic equals zero fun."

Vic forced a smile. "At least I'm here. Though I think you're definitely great at making your own fun, when you need to."

"So you're okay now? Was it cool? Even better than when I got stitches that one time?"

It was the last thing from cool, and Vic failed to stop the shiver that ran through him as the questions sent him back to a late night at the end of May and a red sports car crossing the solid yellow line, and shattered glass, and blood, and screaming, and everything fading to black and waking up a week later with a tube up his nose—

"It was alright," said Vic, steadying himself. "They put pins in my legs and the doctor says they can't come out yet, maybe not ever, because it was a comminuted fracture and they said that mine became really complicated—"

"You have _stuff _inside your legs?" Wally's mouth fell open and stayed open. "Like, metal things? Would you set off a metal detector, do you think?"

"I'm not sure." Vic shrugged. "I've never tried it. I can ask my mom, maybe."

"This is the greatest! You're like, a robot or something—like a cyborg!"

Vic thought that he wouldn't have liked the words if they'd come from anyone else but Wally, but the smile was so genuine that he couldn't be upset. "Not really. It's not like I have superpowers or anything."

Wally giggled. "Yeah, sure: whatever, Cyborg."

"I've started something, haven't I?" he muttered, but Wally didn't hear him because he was too busy yelling something about buying Vic a soda.


	3. Shoulders and Ice Cream

**Flip Turn**

**Chapter Three: Shoulders and Ice Cream

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**

"Terra, head to the side!"

Gar held tight to the lane rope so he could see what was going on, watching as the girl swimming in front of him stopped on a dime, jerking up to see what she'd done wrong.

"Huh?" She spit the end of her pigtail out of her mouth.

Coach Bruce pointed to a row of lounge chairs on the other end of the pool, right in front of their lane. "Do you see those chairs? If you can see them while you're swimming, you're not breathing correctly. I want you to look at either side of the wall."

Terra tried to shrug and tread water at the same time, which didn't work very well and she ended up swallowing water and coughing a lot—Gar was really glad he'd grabbed the lane rope instead. "But that way is _harder!"_

"It will be easier if you get used to it, and I want to see you making an effort to do so. I just explained this, Terra."

Pink goggles looked over at Gar and Terra frowned. "It _is_ harder; y'know. You should just pick your head straight up. He's stupid; he's telling us to do it wrong."

Gar had to kind of agree. Swimming was already hard without Coach Bruce trying to mess him up, but this guy just didn't know _anything_ about what was fast and what wasn't. Turning your head to the side took so long because you had to really concentrate and make sure you remembered, and by the time you did that, you were out of air, and plus it made you swim all crooked. What was worse was that he was being so _mean _to _girls._ You just didn't do that, especially not to girls who were wearing pink.

"And, Gar, get off the lane rope. Now."

Rolling his eyes—his new goggles had mirrors on the lenses so you couldn't see inside; he'd asked for them just so he could make faces—Gar shoved the rope away, immediately feeling the water threaten to swallow him up. He was supposed to be working on breathing to the side, even though that was just so stupid, but it was all Gar could do to stay on top of the water. By the time he'd managed to lift his head up where he could actually breathe, he didn't have time to remember _where _he was supposed to do it.

Luckily, Terra seemed to agree, from what she'd said to him, though right now she was way ahead of Gar, and when he picked his head up again he had just enough time to see that she was trying to do what Coach Bruce had asked. But then he couldn't hold his head up anymore and had to go back under.

It was about six forevers before Gar got to the wall, and he held onto it as if it were about to be ripped away from him, resting his cheek on the hot concrete of the pool deck and listening to his heartbeat. Thinking that Coach Bruce should be happy because he finally had his head to the side, so _ha,_ Gar noticed a girl on the other side of the starting block, sitting on the side of the pool with her feet in the water. She was swinging her legs back and forth absently, and Gar wondered why he'd never noticed that she was in his lane. Something about the way she curved in on herself and kept her head tucked down near her chest made Gar's eyes pass over her, somehow, without really taking in what he saw.

Well, anyway, he'd noticed her now.

"Hi," said Gar, not picking up his head. The girl didn't look at him. And didn't look at him. He tried again. "Umm, hi? Girl in the blue swim suit?"

The girl turned, slowly, and it took her a few seconds to see Gar from behind the starting block with his head on the ground. She bent her head a little, peering between the bottom of the block and that weird bar that some of the big kids held onto when they did backstroke starts. "Hey," she said.

"You talk funny," said Gar. It was true. Gar had never heard anybody sound like that. It was almost like she halfway didn't expect for anybody to be talking to her—and didn't want anyone to know that she didn't expect it. Also, her eyes were almost…purple. That was so weird. "I'm Gar, who're you?"

"Sorry," the girl murmured blankly. "And I'm Raven." She went back to swinging her legs through the water.

A blonde blob surfaced between Gar and Raven, and Terra waved at them as she drew in a big breath. "Hi, I don't know you yet, I'm Terra! Are you as fun as Starfire?"

"No," said Raven.

Lip stuck out slightly in an expression that Gar's mother usually called 'pouting,' Terra squeezed the water out of her pigtails one after the other. "Starfire's not here today 'cos she has to go to the dentist. But she doesn't have any cavities."

"I've never had a cavity," Gar announced, picking his head up and looking over to check and see if Raven heard. He couldn't tell. She didn't smile, or nod, or shrug, or _anything. _

Terra stared down into the water like she was trying to boil it all up with her eyes. "Neither have I," she said, the words falling out of her in a rush of air.

Gar was about to say something amazingly funny, but a loud voice interrupted him. A loud, familiar voice, because he'd gotten used to being interrupted by Coach Bruce—and the one time he'd tried to talk over him was one time too many. "We need to talk about that last 50."

Terra raised her hand. "Fifty of what?"

"Meters," said Coach Bruce dismissively. "Now, most of you are still not breathing correctly. I want you to look at the bottom of the pool when breathing out and turn your heads to the side when breathing in. This will reduce drag because your bodies are more streamlined. Does everyone understand?"

Gar looked around the pool. A few kids nodded, Robin among them—of course. Most of them just looked really confused. Finally, Gar decided to answer. "Nu-uh!" He shook his head, still holding the side with one hand.

A murmur of agreement told him that he wasn't alone.

Coach Bruce sighed. Loudly. "Alright, everyone watch Robin."

He asked them to watch the people who were doing it right all the time, and it was almost always Robin. Sometimes Karen or Wally, but usually Robin. It wasn't fair that he _always _got to do it and it definitely wasn't fair that he'd had so much more practice than everyone else. It wasn't exactly Gar's fault that he didn't get to swim with some guy who had millions of medals and was on T.V. and stuff.

Robin didn't say anything, just backed up until he was against the wall, then pushed off, arms in that position that Coach Bruce had called a streamline, and taking quite awhile before he actually needed to breathe. But once he did, Gar could definitely see how he was doing it, and somehow, the stupid rule about breathing to the side worked for Robin. Pretty much anything would work for Robin, though. Gar tried to push himself out of the water using the wall, making himself as tall as he could so he could keep watching.

"I still don't get it," said Terra after Robin had stopped swimming.

A boy in the far lane with dark skin—Vic, one of Wally's friends—seemed to have a small argument with himself, then spoke up, hesitant at first, "It's like you have a scoop of ice cream on each shoulder, and when you need to breathe, you turn your head like you're biting the ice cream."

"Ohhh, that makes sense!" said a girl who looked a lot like Terra, except she had short hair, to her chin, and what looked like a very expensive swim suit.

Gar looked from one side to the other, down at his shoulders, and grinned. Well, at least that would be _fun,_ even if it didn't work.

Coach Bruce seemed to think about saying a few things but then must have decided that none of them were very good ideas. It was the first time Gar had seen him take awhile before he said something. "…Do you all think you can do that?"

"It'll be a piece of cake." The girl who looked like Terra smirked.

"Or ice cream," said Wally, poking Vic in the shoulder and grinning.

"Excellent, then let's try that 50 again. Remember: ice cream." Something like a smile was fast infecting Coach Bruce's face.

"Okay!"

Gar could almost do it this time. He still didn't really understand what the point was, because it seemed so much faster to do it the old way, but he liked the way Vic had explained it. He'd gotten all the way to the other end and was just about to turn around to try another lap when he tossed a careless glance behind him to see how Raven was doing (She was _right _behind him; Gar should probably let her go in front, but he didn't want to and she didn't mind).

Raven definitely wasn't doing anything like breathing to the side. In fact, she wasn't doing anything like putting her face in the water. At all.

"Hey, y'know, you have to put your face in the water before you can breathe," he said helpfully, sticking out an arm to stop her. He stumbled over the words slightly as he fought to put more air in his lungs.

Raven stopped, standing on the bottom of the pool after a fleeting look towards their coach. "I can breathe fine. But it looks like you can't."

Feeling his face get hot, Gar tried to distract himself with what he'd wanted to tell her in the first place. "But that's not the point—your face is supposed to be in the water."

"I don't want to," said Raven.

"But you _have _to!"

And then, Raven was slamming her hands into the water and making a huge splash, glaring at Gar before she squeezed her eyes shut, shaking her head viciously. Gar was glad she closed them, because the way she was looking scared him. Not like she was mad—like something was going to _get _her. And he didn't want to watch. "I don't want to and I'm not gonna so _shut up!" _Not waiting for an answer, she skirted around him without even bothering to touch the wall and resumed swimming, head out of the water just like before.

Gar watched her for a few seconds before he decided that he really didn't feel like being made to do pushups for standing on the bottom, so he pushed off the wall and tried not to think about the way Raven's eyes had looked before she closed them. It made his stomach feel heavy, like it was going to drag him down to the bottom of the pool and keep him there forever. He kicked real hard and made himself concentrate on breathing and ice cream.

At the end of practice, Coach Bruce made them all get out of the water and listen to some stuff about the swim meet on Thursday—he glanced over at Terra's blue lips and said they could get their towels first. The swim meet was going to be really fun, it seemed like. Gar knew they sold a lot of candy there.

"And no sugar or carbonated drinks under any circumstances." He crossed his arms over his chest with finality, totally unaffected by the immediate wave of complaining. "You can have it after you're finished racing, but if I see you eating candy or drinking soda during competition, I am going to confiscate it."

"What's 'conscifate' mean?" Terra pulled her towel tighter around her shoulders, teeth chattering as she said it.

"Confiscate, and it means that you will no longer have it."

Vic raised his hand. "How are you doing seeding? Can we request events?"

The way he said it sounded like Coach Bruce was going to grow a flower garden or something, and Gar had to bite down a giggle.

"That's reasonable," said Coach Bruce. "You may request one event. Anyone who would like to, see me after practice. Any more questions?"

"What time do we have to be there again?" asked the girl who looked a lot like Terra as she twisted her bracelet around and around her wrist.

Wally snorted. "You need to know so you can spend more time on your hair, Kitten?"

"Shut up, you—"

"That's enough. Four-thirty, as I've said at least six times today; do not be late."

Kitten nodded and went back to playing with her bracelet. Then, nobody else had any more questions, so Coach Bruce said they could go and that anybody who wanted to ask for an event should wait till after the big kids swam their warm-up.

Gar didn't ask because he didn't want to stay at practice for extra time—and besides, he didn't know any events, and all he'd ask for was an easy one, and that would just make Coach Bruce so mad that he'd probably put Gar in all the hard things on purpose. He hoped he could remember everything for Thursday. But there was a _lot_… Wondering if you could get disqualified for not doing the ice cream breathing thing (at first he'd been really excited when he'd heard you could be DQ'd, but then Coach Bruce had gotten really mad and said that it definitely didn't mean you could go to Dairy Queen—it was really dumb to name something like losing after an ice cream place), Gar headed for the bike rack.


	4. Half a Second

**Flip Turn**

**Chapter Four: Half a Second

* * *

**

The marker tickled Terra's arm, and she watched with interest as the little trails of black ink stained her skin.

Robin was writing on her arm. Which was funny to begin with, because Terra didn't think Robin had ever drawn on anything but paper in his life—_living _with Coach Bruce would be even harder than just swimming for him, and he'd probably be so mad if somebody drew on his walls.

Anyway, Robin was allowed to do this. He was writing her events on her arm, at an angle where she would be able to read them without twisting herself up like a Terra-pretzel. He was writing them in tiny, neat handwriting, because everything about Robin was tiny and orderly and way too neat for a seven-year-old. Not like it would help all that much, because Terra didn't understand what the numbers and symbols meant, but everybody else was doing it, so she needed to.

"So, that one's the short free…and that one's, umm…oh my god, am I in _butterfly?"_ She pointed, and he swatted her hand away.

"No, that's backstroke, and don't get your finger so close; you'll smear it." Robin went back to writing. The tip of the marker was cold and kind of fuzzy. This was almost as fun as the day she'd decided to finger-paint in her garage, which had been really great until her daddy had caught her and made her clean the whole floor. And wash all her clothes. And her hair.

Terra felt something right behind her, then a chin resting on her shoulder. A blur of red hair out of the corner of her eye told her exactly who it was. "Hey, Starfire," she said, trying not to move her arm as she turned to look at her friend—Robin would be mad.

Starfire indicated one of the symbols on Terra's arm with a tanned finger. "I know what those letters are. 'SF' for Starfire, yes?"

"No, for short free," said Robin, dropping Terra's arm after he'd written the last symbol and telling her that she had to be really careful not to touch anything for at least five minutes. "Terra's swimming short free, breaststroke and backstroke. You're swimming…" He glanced at her arm. "Short free, long free and butterfly."

At the last word, Terra spun around to face Starfire, pigtails smacking against her cheeks. "Why are you in _butterfly?"_ It was the hardest stroke, it was _so _hard, you had to be really strong like Coach Bruce to do it—Starfire had to be insane. Or maybe it was just because she wasn't from this country…she'd said she was from Africa and always liked telling Terra about the ways that things were different there.

Starfire shrugged. "The name is very pretty. Like the clip you had in your hair last week."

"But—but you'll get DQ'd!"

"I kn-oow," sang Starfire. "That does not matter to me; I want to try everything." Her giant smile faded into concentration as she looked down at the ponytail holder in her hand. "Will you please help me with this…I think it is a rubber band, and I have to have it in my hair—Coach Bruce said."

Terra nodded and began pulling up Starfire's hair—it was hard because there was a heap of it, and the other girl had to kneel down because she was so much taller.

Warm-up had been even more confusing than regular swim practice—and loud, and big, and fast, and _scary._ She'd had to swim with the entire team, not just the ten and unders, and all the big kids splashed too much when they turned in that way that was like a somersault in the water. And they yelled a lot. And whenever a big kid was behind her, Terra had to get out of the way real fast because they'd run her over like the animals that she saw on the side of the road when her mommy drove her to school. She tightened Starfire's ponytail and hoped that the rest of the swim meet wasn't like that.

"'Kay, I'm done…"

She barely got the words out when a lady in a blue flowered shirt started talking over her—and that was easy to do, because she was talking into what looked like some kind of speaker, and it made her voice louder. "Eight and under girls medley relay!" barked the lady, and the way she said it wasn't exactly mean…but when your voice was that loud, you always sounded kind of mean.

Terra looked around frantically for Robin to ask him what that meant, but then the lady was saying "Markov, Terra!" in that almost-mean voice and Terra really didn't want to make her mad, so she walked over to her and hoped she was standing in the right place.

The lady led her over to a row of benches, sat her down on the first one right between Raven and Kitten, and went back to get Starfire. Terra leaned over Kitten's shoulder, trying to read the pink card she had clutched in her hand. Kitten glared and scooted away, hiding it with her forearm. Terra moved up a bench because that's what everybody in front of her was doing.

"You're swimming breaststroke," said Raven quietly, after Terra had begged Kitten for just one look at the card, with no success. "Because you're second. It goes backstroke, breaststroke, butterfly, freestyle."

"How'd you know that?"

Raven shrugged. "I read the rule book." They moved up another bench.

Too soon, they ran out of benches and it was time for Terra's team to move behind the blocks. Except, Terra and Starfire had to go to the other end of the pool, following behind a bunch of other pairs of girls. A man in a white collared shirt told them to hold hands and remember that they were in lane number three. When they finally got there, Terra wanted to make Starfire stand in front of her but Raven had said that she was supposed to be in front because she was swimming breaststroke—why did that matter?

The man behind the starter's stand said something in a crackly voice that Terra didn't understand. It was a good thing that Raven did, because she climbed carefully into the water along with five other girls—Terra noticed that she clung to the bar below the blocks, using it to pull herself in instead of going all the way underwater like the others.

Coach Bruce was sitting on the other side of the pool where nobody but the officials was allowed, next to the other team's coach, a lady (who was old, but nowhere near as old as Coach Bruce) with blonde pigtails like Terra (except not today because Coach Bruce had made her wear a swim cap, and it was tight and itchy and she hated it). The pigtails made her look a lot younger than she probably was—and Terra thought that only little girls were supposed to wear pigtails. The other coach poked Coach Bruce with some pieces of paper that she'd rolled up. He didn't seem to like that very much.

"Take your mark," said the starter, and everything went silent. Terra knew exactly what that meant but didn't see how Raven was supposed to do it for backstroke. She really hoped that the starter hadn't meant _everyone._

A _beep _cut through the quiet, and it wasn't like a whistle but it still meant _go,_ Terra knew that, and she watched as Raven carefully pushed off the wall, head held out of the water at an angle that couldn't possibly be comfortable. Terra and Starfire cheered for her until Terra's throat felt like an elephant had sat on it, and she got so excited wondering if Raven would be able to beat the girl in lane four that she almost forgot about swimming. But Starfire shook her arm and pointed, and Terra realized that she'd better get ready, yanking her goggles over her eyes and standing right on the edge of the pool deck, toes hanging over, gaze locked on Raven to make sure she didn't go before the other girl's hand touched the wall. Coach Bruce had said that would get you DQ'd and that it _didn't _mean you got ice cream.

Raven touched. Terra jumped, holding her breath as she hit the water.

She tried to remember the things they'd learned in practice, but her brain didn't work right with all the screaming and the guys with stopwatches at the end of the lane, so she just settled for thinking about nothing and trusting her legs and arms to move the right way. Her heart was beating really fast, and it was all she could do to find more air every time her head broke the surface, always just a little bit closer to the wall, and her arms felt like limp spaghetti noodles and her legs were on fire and just when there wasn't any more strength left within her, she was touching the wall with her fingertips and a pale blur above her head vaulted off the block in a perfect dive (Terra didn't know how to do that)…and Terra slowly turned, clutching tightly to the wall and looking down the lane at Kitten swimming butterfly.

The guy with the stopwatch in Terra's lane had to pull her out of the pool; she was too tired to do anything but raise her arms so he could grab them, and she stumbled a little bit when he set her on the pool deck. It took a few seconds before she could do anything but suck in air, and at last she was able to focus on what was going on in the water, Starfire swimming the last lap of the race—and not swimming it very well, either, since she kept forgetting what Coach Bruce had said about breathing to the side. But every time she picked her head up, she was smiling, so that was good enough, probably.

"Yay, we came in third!" Terra screamed once Starfire touched the wall.

Over in the next lane, a taller girl with brown hair and dripping-wet shoulders rolled her eyes. "Oh, awesome, because there were only three teams, you know."

Terra stuck out her tongue. This girl was clearly stupid and didn't understand how well they'd done. She turned around real fast, crossed her arms and stomped off to the other end of the pool, weaving around grownups with headsets in search of Raven and Kitten.

"You're, like, really good at diving, you know," Terra said as soon as Kitten was close enough to hear her.

"I know." Kitten smiled a little half-smile and turned up her nose. "Come on: my daddy's sitting by the lifeguard stand and he said that he'll buy me and all my friends anything we want to eat."

Terra kicked her stomach when it begged for just a little bit of candy and followed Kitten while she tried to think of some healthy snacks.

* * *

"Where are we _going?"_

"C'mon, we're watching Wally and them swim butterfly!"

Gar pulled Terra by the hand as they ran over the grass, mud squishing between their toes. Terra cringed when they got to the little plastic pool that everyone was supposed to step in to clean their feet off before they went onto the deck. It was so dirty, the water all brown and icky with leaves caking the surface; it wasn't going to clean anybody's feet so why did they have it there? They splashed through the pool, ducking under the lady with the stack of cards and the machine that made her voice loud—Terra wasn't afraid of her anymore.

By the time they got to the rows of benches, Terra was way out of breath. Wally was sitting on one of the last ones, right next to "and them": Robin and a boy named Roy who didn't come to a lot of the practices because he was trying to do archery and swim team at the same time. Terra looked around for the girls because she didn't care all that much about the boys—remembering boys, she immediately dropped Gar's hand and wiped herself off using her bathing suit, hoping that her cootie shot would protect her. It took a minute to find them because they were sitting in the row of chairs behind the blocks, and the only girl she recognized from her team was Kitten, who was wearing a pink jacket over her suit, one with gems sewn into the fabric that reflected the fading sunlight (Starfire was already finished with her race, at the other end of the pool trying to pull herself out, stopping to wave at Terra and Gar like she was trying to wave her arm right off her body). . Karen Beecher was with another group of girls, seated behind the boys, and Terra remembered that that was because she was ten, and the nine and ten year olds weren't supposed to swim with people who were eight or under.

"Gonna win, Robin?" Gar asked, smirking.

Robin shrugged and tightened his goggles, passing them from one hand to the other without looking up.

"No, _I'm _gonna win!" Wally stood up suddenly and rested his forearms on Robin's head. It kind of looked like there was steam coming out of Robin's ears.

"Not if I can help it," said Roy with a glance over at Terra. "I'm really strong 'cos of archery, so I hope you're faster than last year."

She felt a tapping on her shoulder. "Hey, if you kids aren't swimming you need to find someplace else to watch." The card lady was standing right behind them, though she had her machine at her side so her voice was normal this time.

"Sorry," said Gar, while shoving a brightly colored bag of something that looked a lot like candy behind his back. "We'll go stand over there," he added, pointing to the opposite side of the pool.

At the blocks, the starter was saying those things with his crackly voice again, and Kitten had shrugged off her jacket and was standing with both hands on the block, ready to step up. "Bye, Kitten! Go real fast!" Terra screamed, poking her head through two grownups so she could see better. Turning to Gar, she narrowed her eyes at him and poked at his bag of candy. "You're not s'posed to have that and Coach Bruce is gonna throw you off the lifeguard stand."

"He won't if he doesn't find out!" Gar smiled, showing all his teeth—and the candy stuck between them, _yuck._ Boys were so disgusting.

"Take your mark."

_Beep._

Butterfly wasn't Terra's favorite stroke to swim (that one was breaststroke because you got to swim like a frog) but it was her favorite to watch. She'd seen Coach Bruce swim it once and it had looked so…_easy._ Like he could do it in his sleep. It had made Terra feel very small, like she knew she could never be that good, or even half that good, but she didn't even care because just watching was enough. Besides, Terra didn't care about being a good swimmer. She was fine with watching the better people.

Kitten got second, and there were _six _people in her lane this time so that would show that stupid girl with the brown hair who thought that mattered. She climbed out of the pool all by herself, gracefully picking up her jacket from the back of the chair. Her butterfly wasn't quite as graceful, but at least she had a great dive.

The boys had to swim after the girls. _Ha, ha, ha. _

It was hard because Terra didn't know who to cheer for. But she realized pretty quickly that this was one race that was between Wally and Robin. Roy was good, but in the way that Kitten was good. Wally and Robin were good in a way that wasn't quite _normal, _and Terra thought that maybe this was why they called it butterfly, because they did kind of look like they were flying on top of the water, a little bit. It was effortless and fluid and _right_ when they did it: Robin because he was so serious about it and could probably use math to tell you the exact right way to move your arms, even though you wouldn't know what he meant; Wally because you could just tell that this was what he was supposed to do, what he'd been born to do. Terra wasn't sure who finished first and didn't think it mattered. It pretty much looked like a tie and what did half a second matter?

"Wow," said Terra.

"Wow." Gar nodded in agreement, handful of candy halfway to his mouth in a gesture that didn't quite make it.

Apparently, it did matter who'd gotten that half second, because when they were all packing their bags, Robin looked like he'd rather spend the rest of his life at the dentist than have to stand next to Wally for one more second.

"Geez, what's the problem?" Wally handed him a towel, but Robin just ignored him. He leaned over to Terra, so close that she could see his freckles. "I think he's mad at me for beating him."

"It was just half a second," Terra offered with an apologetic look at Robin. "Maybe not even that. It was, like…" She snapped her fingers as quick as she could, having to try a few times before she actually made a sound. _"That_ much."

"It's not your fault," said Robin, zipping up his bag and slinging it over his shoulder as he stood. That bag was almost as big as he was—which wasn't very big, even though he was bigger than Terra.

"It's not _my _fault, either! All I did was swim," Wally said.

Robin stared at him as if he was looking right through him into the trees that rimmed the perimeter of the grassy field. "I was talking to you."

"Oh."

But Robin didn't hear that because he'd already pushed past him towards the pool deck, head down. Terra bit her lip, pretending to be very busy with peeling her swim cap off her head. It pulled at her hair with a weird, prickly sensation. Then she decided not to think about how sad Robin had looked, because she wasn't allowed to leave until everybody had cleaned up _all_ of the mess, and she had to help.

After a million years of folding up wet towels, Terra leaned against the pool gate, looking around for her mommy, but found the other team's coach instead: a tiny girl with dark brown curls was running up to her, yelling something that sounded a lot like _"Coach Harleeey!" _The coach made to pick the girl up but sort of missed, nearly dropping her on the pavement, but she seemed to think this was very funny and just dissolved into giggling, patting the side of the girl's ponytail and touching her nose as if she were pushing a button.

Terra was pretty sure that it wasn't a good idea for Coach Harley to be around kids. She had a smile that looked like she maybe wanted to break things.

Then, luckily, Terra found her mommy and could stop wondering how many kids on Coach Harley's team had drowned. She had a long, green skirt and a fabric headband in her hair. Terra grabbed her hand and told her that they were allowed to leave.

She noticed Raven as she was hoisting a folding chair into the van—well, okay, she was _helping _with the folding chair. Looking down at her sandals, some expression on her face that Terra couldn't read in the darkness, Raven was talking to Coach Bruce about something. Or at least, she was listening to him talk about something: she was really just standing there, hands useless at her sides and chin pointed downward. Terra waved at her, and called her name when it looked like she just didn't see. After she had repeated it a few times, Raven did look up a little bit, straight at Terra for just half a second (like the half second that Robin was so worried about).

She knew she'd seen. But Raven didn't wave back.


	5. Sinks

**Flip Turn**

**Chapter Five: Sinks

* * *

**

Raven hated swimming, anyway.

It wasn't her fault that her mom had made her, had said it would be fun, hadn't listened when Raven offered to clean the whole house and wash the car _and _mow the lawn if she just wouldn't have to be on the swim team. And it wasn't her fault that the coach was mean and huge and had a loud voice that Raven didn't like.

But now, she was in big trouble. And that was kind of her fault.

She was supposed to "talk" to Coach Bruce after practice. They'd already done a whole lot of talking—except Raven hadn't really gotten a chance to speak because he was the kind of man you just didn't interrupt—and none of those talks had been good ones. Raven pretty much knew what he was going to say, but it was still awful, having to just stand there next to the fence, waiting for him, like there was a giant stamp on her forehead that said 'Bad Girl.' It was like in school, when the teacher would sometimes ask one of the other kids to see her after class, but Raven had never had to do that; all her teachers liked her because she was quiet and always did her work quickly, and would sit at her desk reading a book after she'd finished. That was another thing that made swim team so horrible: Raven was used to being good at things, like reading and geography and multiplying. She didn't like being the worst one.

And she had to be the worst one, didn't she, because nobody _else _had had to talk to the coach after practice.

"You wanna play Sharks and Minnows, Raven?"

She jumped, chest tightening with fear and slowly realized that Vic was the one who'd asked her the question. Letting her whole stomach inflate with air like the doctor said (Raven had a doctor, but not the kind that gave you shots—sometimes she thought that kind would be better), she tried to put on a calm face as she slowly shook her head. "I…I don't feel like it."

"Aww, c'mon, Rae-Rae, we have to get ten people at least," said Gar, appearing behind her almost out of nowhere and flashing a smile at her that was probably supposed to be convincing.

"I don't feel like it," said Raven.

"Please, _please,_ just for a little while? You know you wanna!" Gar whined, taking her elbow and making to drag her in the direction of the deep end. The deep end where lots of people dove in and splashed water everywhere, and they'd expect her to dive, too, and she wouldn't, _couldn't_…

"I don't think she wants to, Gar," Vic said calmly.

"Sure she does!"

"It's fine; we'll go ask Jade." Vic smiled at Raven. "Maybe you'll feel like it later." Then he started to lead Gar away from the fence, ignoring his protests that Raven really did want to play.

"…And besides, I'm _not _asking Jade! She kicked Roy last week, and didn't you _see _that bruise?..."

Raven watched them go and hoped they hadn't figured out that she was in trouble. Hoped the stamp on her forehead hadn't given it away, which was kind of like hoping that one plus one would stop being two. She adjusted the strap on her bathing suit, made sure it was in the right place, wondering if her mom would buy her one of those suits that had long sleeves if she promised to be good.

But she didn't have long to wonder, because a big hand fell on her shoulder, and her brain knew exactly whose it was, even though her body mostly wanted to cringe back and see if there was any way to hide.

"The Titans were bad, you know," said Raven, staring at a little puddle on the pool deck.

"What?"

It was the only thing she could think of to say, and plus she'd been wanting to make sure he knew it, so she continued. "The Titans. The name of our swim team. They were bad. Zeus had to put them in jail."

"You're right," said Coach Bruce. "Of course, I didn't choose the name."

"We shouldn't be named after bad people." Raven reached up to scratch her head. "We just shouldn't."

He was silent for a few seconds, as if he wasn't quite sure what to say—but it wasn't an angry kind of silence, wasn't the _bad _kind. "That's a good point. But it's not why I asked you to stay after practice."

"Why did you ask me to stay after practice?" she recited, looking up at him and trying to fill her stomach all the way with air again.

"Raven, will you get in the water, please?" He didn't answer the question and that already made her cautious, and she edged slowly towards the pool as if he might forget that he'd asked if she could just take enough time getting there. "It's okay," he added, the words a little strange coming from him.

She bit her lip and went down the steps one at a time, holding on to the metal bar until she couldn't hold it anymore, until she was standing at the edge of the shallow end with the water lapping at her chest. Coach Bruce sat down on the edge of the deck with his feet dangling in the water, and he wasn't quite as scary that way, for some reason.

"I need you to put your face in the water."

He went right back to being scary.

Raven gasped for breath, but an apple had decided to grow in her throat when she wasn't looking and she couldn't find any air. She backed away from him, well aware that she was backing into deeper water, but she didn't care, because she could handle deep water, she knew how to swim, but she couldn't handle big hands and a loud voice and the way her heart tried to jump out of its chest when she saw the water pouring out of the faucet into the sink and the counter cutting into her stomach as he held her there…

"Raven?" Coach Bruce was staring at her, a strange look on his face, and Raven had to blink a few times to make sure he was really there.

She finally found some air. "I can't."

"That's what you keep telling me, but you've yet to tell me why. You've seen everyone else on the team go underwater and nothing bad has happened. There's no reason to be afraid."

"It's different," she insisted, shaking her head.

"How?"

"It _is!"_

"Alright," he said, and for a moment she thought that he was finally going to leave her alone, but then he'd hoisted himself into the water in one powerful movement and his hands were holding her still, not tight enough to hurt but strong enough that she'd never get away. And suddenly she couldn't find her balance.

"Take a breath."

Then she was under the surface, water roaring around her head, slithering into her ears, her nose, water that she couldn't control, and the faucet was still running over her head, pounding around her hair, water that smelled like old vegetables and wanted to keep her down at the bottom of the sink just like the hand on her back and never let her breathe again, and that voice was asking why, why did she make him do it, why was she a bad girl, and Raven didn't know why but she _was _bad, she was _always_ bad, and maybe it would be better if she just let herself breathe in, feeding her lungs water until they didn't work anymore and she wouldn't have to—

But she was too bad to even do _that,_ because it was air she was breathing, not water, and they weren't her daddy's hands, they were Coach Bruce's, and he was hauling her out of the pool and why was she crying, why was she _screaming,_ she shouldn't do that, Daddy hated it when she did that, he was going to be even madder…she had to get away, somehow, so she tried to wrench herself away from the hands. Except that just made her suit pull a little to the side, down so it stretched over her shoulder.

Then she gasped, the shock kicking the tears right out of her body. It _was _Coach Bruce. And those were his eyes, wide open in horror as he stared straight at her, right in the middle of her shoulder at the line of pale skin that was normally covered up—at the circular burn she knew was there, from that night she'd made Daddy _really _mad and he'd taken his cigarette and—

"Raven, can you hear me?"

She could, so she nodded, but she could also see the little circle of kids that was starting to gather, all of them _staring _at her. And Raven just wanted to hide. To hide somewhere that didn't have any water.

A yell from the deep end, Vic's, filled up with real panic—and Vic would never pretend that something was wrong. Raven's head jerked around to see what it was, and her eyes hardly had time to focus before she realized that Coach Bruce wasn't holding her anymore and the other kids were staring at something else now…and Raven didn't _really _want Gar to drown, but if he had to do it, this was just the right time.

She just sat there watching as he got Gar out of the pool, as easily as if he were picking up a soda can—but after that she couldn't see much because a crowd had gathered all around them in a tight, dense circle.

A crowd that did not involve Vic, because he was right behind her asking if she was okay.

"No," said Raven.

"Sorry, dumb question." Vic moved to sit beside her. "Gar's alright, don't worry. Way too tired for playing in the deep end, it turned out. Coach has it under control, though—he's good at that, y'know. He'd never let one of us get hurt."

"Yeah," said Raven, shrugging, the movement reminding her to readjust her bathing suit—but not before Vic must have had time to see. The shudder that he couldn't hide fast enough told Raven that he'd seen.

"Listen, I'm not very good at this…but if you ever need to tell me anything, you know where to find me." He hesitated, staring at his legs, and Raven tried not to stare, too, even though she knew that he'd had operations after his car accident. "And you shouldn't give up on swim team just because of—whatever it is."

Raven nodded slightly, folding her hands in her lap, concentrating on the way the sun felt as it dried her back. Then Vic didn't say anything else, just sat with her on the lounge chair as a few long, quiet minutes passed by. Raven didn't mind. She was good at being quiet.

At some point, she looked up to Coach Bruce walking toward her—Gar was right next to him, holding his hand, a green towel wrapped around his head that made him look like a brightly colored ghost. They both looked tired.

"You okay?" Vic asked, looking a little guilty, for some reason.

"Uh huh," said Gar. "It was kind of c—" A glare from Coach Bruce cut him off. "I mean it wasn't cool at all and I will never 'exert myself beyond my ability' ever again."

"Good answer," Coach Bruce said humorlessly. "And see that you don't."

Gar dropped his hand, face a bit red as if he'd suddenly realized he'd been holding it. "I won't, I _promise. _Hey, Vic, can we play with your torpedo?"

Vic nodded and was off the lounge chair before Raven could blink, but he tossed a meaningful look at Raven before he went off to follow Gar. "Just remember what I said," he whispered, and then he was gone. And she would remember—it just wouldn't do any good.

"Gar, stay in the shallow end—and _no running!"_ Coach Bruce yelled after them. He sighed heavily then turned his attention back to Raven, who felt her heart start beating faster again as she tried to make herself invisible. "I'm sorry about that," he said, voice a lot softer.

She wasn't sure what he was apologizing for. It might have been for more than one thing. But it didn't matter. "It's alright," Raven murmured. "You don't have to be sorry for anything. I'm quitting swimming."


	6. That S Word Thingie

**Flip Turn**

**Chapter Six: That S-Word Thingie

* * *

**

"So Robin, what happened to the _right _side of the lane, huh?"

Robin looked up irritably. "What are you talking about?"

"You _said _we were supposed to be on the right side of the lane," said Wally. "But you totally swim right down the middle at meets." His forehead wrinkled, blue eyes narrowing slightly. "And when we race in practice, too, actually."

Some people didn't even _try _to understand. "No, you swim on the right side of the lane when there are other people in it—didn't you hear what I said the first day?"

"Yup, I know, that's me, Mr. Safety Hazard." In one fluid movement, Wally climbed onto the fourth starting block, looking down at Robin in a pretty good imitation of that look that grownups gave him when they thought he'd done something cute. "So it's okay to be a safety hazard at swim meets?"

"No!" Robin had to turn his head way up to look at Wally; he wished he'd come down. "There's nothing wrong with—Wally, _don't _spin like that!"

But Wally wasn't listening, just twirling around on the starting block with his hands over his ears and a huge grin on his face. "Sorry, I can't hear you, but I think I _could _close my eyes and do this if I wanted to…"

"Wally, get off the block."

The spinning halted, his head jerking around a split second before he managed to make himself stop moving. Robin followed the motion, even though he already knew who'd said that. Bruce didn't look happy. At all.

In fact, he hadn't been happy for a few days. Robin could always tell when something was bothering him. It was hard to notice if you didn't know him, but every move he made was tense, so totally focused on _something _that it made you want to apologize for not being important enough. Last night, Bruce had been checking Robin's algebra and the way he'd held the pencil…yeah, there was definitely something bothering him.

Wally's eyes turned upward, so slight that most people would have missed it—of course, Bruce didn't, but he just told Wally to get down _right now_ and that he had to swim double warm-up. Laughing, Wally waved at everyone on the pool deck and jumped off the block, pushing off the bottom of the pool and not coming up to breathe until he was at least halfway to the other end. Well, jumping right off into the water obviously wasn't what he was supposed to do, but technically Bruce _did _say to swim warm-up and…Wally was really good at getting out of things. "Technically" was one of his favorite words. Robin didn't think he really knew what "technically" meant.

Robin was also pretty sure that Wally didn't have any questions about what side of the lane to swim on. He'd just said that to be annoying. It had worked.

Robin spent warm-up wondering how he could have _ever _lost to somebody who spun around on the starting block. For once, he was alone on the side of the pool while everyone else swam—usually, Wally would be right behind him, but not this time. At least that was something. There was no one to talk to—not like Robin wasted time on talking, or anything—so he decided to put his goggles back on and watch people. This way, nobody could see your eyes, so you could stare at them without being rude. And Robin liked to watch. He had a really good memory and always saw the details that nobody else noticed.

So it didn't take him long to notice Raven, being dragged over to a table near the water by a lady who was probably her mother. Especially because she was yelling. Loudly.

Her mother stopped walking, bent to cup Raven's face in her hands. "Raven. We're just going to watch."

Raven shook her head violently, wrenching away. "I don't believe you! You're going to make me swim and I _don't _want to!"

"You've made that pretty clear," said her mother, forehead wrinkling and eyes tired. "You don't have to swim, but you _do _have to watch."

"But—"

She sat Raven in a chair near the backstroke flags (you were supposed to count how many strokes it took to get from the flags to the wall, so you wouldn't hit your head) and started asking her what strokes everyone was doing, kept asking until Raven finally answered, voice emotionless and stubborn.

The last time Robin had seen Raven, Bruce was pulling her out of the pool and she was screaming her head off. He didn't know what the problem was, didn't have time to find out before Gar almost drowned and then Raven screaming didn't seem so important anymore. Thinking back, he could remember Bruce making a phone call and then going out to talk to someone in a silver car, and not coming back for awhile, and then Raven didn't come back for five _days. _

He'd only asked once, in the car on the way home, and Bruce had said that it wasn't any of Robin's business and that he was not going to mention it again. Of course, what it mostly looked like to Robin was that Raven had thrown a temper tantrum because she didn't want to be underwater. Which was just stupid. Robin had learned how to swim when he was two. And _now _he could swim all the way across the pool underwater without even breathing.

He was so busy thinking (Robin did that a lot) that he almost didn't hear when Bruce said that everybody needed to go down to the shallow end. In the next lane, Gar groaned. "We spent forever trying to get back here and now you're gonna make us go across again?"

"Yes," said Bruce. "Everyone to the other end, please."

Terra scrunched her face up like she'd bitten into a lemon. "Can we walk?"

"No, you can swim."

Sighing loudly, Terra turned to Gar and pointed down the lane with a fingernail coated in chipped, blue polish. "You go in front of me."

One lap was easy. Robin switched from freestyle to butterfly halfway through.

When everyone had finally found the other end of the pool—everyone but Gar, who got to the flags and decided to hold the lane rope instead of actually swimming—Bruce held up a handful of blue index cards that he seemed to pull out of nowhere. "Who knows what these are?"

They were DQ cards, of course, but Robin didn't answer. He was only supposed to answer if no one else could say. That was the rules.

"They are blue index cards!" Starfire chirped, and Robin jumped because she was a lot closer than he'd been expecting. Five minutes ago, she'd been in lane six, but now she was in his lane. Starfire did that a lot, switching for no real reason, gliding under the lane rope too quick for anybody to catch her.

Bruce paused for a moment. "Yes, but what are they for?"

Starfire shrugged. "That was not part of the question."

"Looks like those cards that they give you before you swim, the ones you give to the timers," Karen supplied, resting her goggles on her forehead to get a better look, brown eyes squinting into the sunlight as soon as she took them off. "Why do you have them?"

"Because if your card is in my hand, you were disqualified at the last meet," said Bruce. Everyone screamed. It took awhile to make them stop.

Hands in her mouth, Terra lowered herself down into the water up to her neck. She leaned over to Robin, chin resting on the lane rope. "I didn't know he _saw _that," she muttered, voice soaked in horror.

"He sees everything," said Robin. It was kind of true. You couldn't lie to Bruce. Robin never lied anymore, anyway, but he'd stopped a long time ago because it just wasn't worth getting in extra trouble; he always found out. In about three seconds.

"So it seems that we have a problem with non-simultaneous breaststroke kick." Bruce pretended to scan the cards in his hand, but he wasn't really reading them; his eyes were focused on the pool. Besides, he probably had them memorized. Lots of people thought that Bruce was just a good swimmer and nothing else, since that was all he ever talked about around most people, but Robin knew that he was really a genius. A psychic genius.

Gar's eyes got huge. "Si—mol—us…_who?"_

"It's what your kick isn't, dummy," Kitten drawled. She reached over to splash Gar, who squeaked out a protest and swabbed desperately at his eyes.

"Stop that!" Starfire splashed her back.

"That's enough." Everybody stopped, because you always stopped when Bruce wanted you to. "Simultaneous means that something happens at the same time. We had some problems last week with remembering what this means. Which strokes require a simultaneous kick?"

"Legs at the same time, right?" Out of nowhere, Raven edged slowly closer to the water—she'd dragged her chair down here when everyone had gone to the shallow end. Stopping at the steps to clutch the metal bar as if she was trying to hide behind it, Raven wrinkled her forehead and continued cautiously, "Umm, breaststroke and butterfly."

Bruce didn't seem surprised, but it was hard to tell. "Exactly."

Sitting on the side of the deck, a girl with dark hair pulled into a long braid studied her feet carefully, moving them up and down together, then snapped her head around with a surprised expression on her face. "Oh-ooh! It's _not _like freestyle!"

"And Jade, maybe you can tell us which direction your toes should be pointed in breaststroke."

The girl with the braid's gaze flitted from Bruce to her toes and back again. Finally, she let her feet fall into the water with a big splash, shaking her head. "I have no idea."

"I know! I know!" Terra had completely forgotten about Bruce seeing the DQ cards. Pigtails bobbed up and down as she jumped off the bottom of the pool, high enough that she almost got her whole chest out of the water. Stopping for a deep breath, she pointed her fingers away from each other and grinned. "Out! Like this!" She looked like a really tiny traffic director.

"Out, like, out of the _water?_ How do we do _that?"_ Gesturing helplessly at Terra's fingers, Jade turned her feet in several different directions, but none of them were the right one.

"Are you stupid?" Kitten sneered.

"I'm a green belt and you'd better shut up or I'm going to break your arm."

Vic slid under the lane rope to help her, seeming only a little bit afraid of the threat, standing in a way that sort of blocked Jade's view of Kitten. "Nah, out like you're trying to kick the sides of the pool. This way…" He seemed to realize something, then turned to look hesitantly up at Bruce. "Umm, can I show her?"

"You can show everyone," said Bruce. "Stop at the fifteen meter mark. If you can't see Vic, get where you can see."

Starfire wriggled around Robin to dive under two lanes, swimming until she was practically close enough to Vic to poke him in the eye. But Robin could see just fine, so he didn't move. Out of the corner of his eye, he noticed Raven turning her toes out, almost secretly, forehead wrinkled in concentration.

Vic was pretty good at showing everybody—he was a lot better than he was at the beginning, at least, when one of his knees turned the wrong way, but he'd fixed it. Robin had seen him swimming laps almost every day after practice (he always had to stay late waiting for Bruce) and sometimes he was _still _working on his kick even after Robin had gone home. He'd never said anything about it, but anyway, now it was better.

"So, where do you point your toes in breaststroke?" Bruce asked after Vic swam back to the wall.

"Out!" Terra bounced her fingers back and forth again, but this time they were a little too careless to really tell what direction they were pointing. Her smile could light at least six Christmas trees, though.

"Is Terra the only one who knows?"

_"Out!" _

"And not out of the water, either!" Jade punctuated.

"Last question," said Bruce. He had a serious expression but it was his fake-serious look. "What kind of kick do you use for breaststroke?"

Everyone was silent for a long time. Robin wondered if this was one of those times when he would have to answer. "Umm, is this that big, long, S-word thingie?" Gar asked uncertainly, twirling his goggles around his finger and scowling as they fell off. He grabbed for them, missed, and had to go underwater because by then they were all the way at the bottom of the pool.

"I think it might just be the big, long, S-word thingie," Bruce said in the fake-serious voice.

"It is soomultemeus!" Starfire nodded sagely.

"Not quite."

Robin knew what it was, of course. He'd seen it in the rule book so many times that it was practically tattooed on his brain. But he let the others try to guess it because he was only supposed to answer if nobody else knew.

He'd opened his mouth to say it when someone else said it for him. "Simultaneous." Still hiding behind the metal bar, Raven took a half-step back when Bruce turned to look at her but then her shoulders relaxed when he smiled.

"Could you say that a little louder, Raven? I don't think Kitten could hear you over in lane one."

"Si—simultaneous," she repeated, not really louder but a lot less afraid.

"I was _so _gonna say that," muttered Gar.

"You were _so _not," said Kitten, turning up her nose and crossing her arms over her chest.

Wally grinned and pointed at the steps. "Raven's a genius!"

"And does anyone remember the word now?" asked Bruce. The fake-serious look was completely gone; he wasn't even pretending to be serious anymore. Before this summer, he'd hardly ever been like this, but for some reason he seemed to smile a lot more at the pool.

"Yep, simultaneous! At the same time and not like freestyle!"

Bruce raised an eyebrow. "Anyone besides Jade?"

_"Simultaneous!"_

"Alright, let's see how much you remember. We're going to do six 25s breaststroke…"

Listening to the set with one ear, Robin moved closer to the steps until the lane rope stopped him. Raven was backing towards her chair now, cheeks slightly flushed, huge, purple t-shirt sliding off her shoulder. It kind of matched her eyes.

Robin thought about it for about two seconds before he promised himself that he'd keep listening with at least one of his ears, and anyway he'd done so many sets for Bruce that he could understand them in his sleep, so he quickly ducked under two lane ropes until he was right next to Raven, one foot leaned onto the lowest step.

"Did you quit?" he asked.

She nodded, pulling her knees up to her chest and wrapping her hands around them.

"How come?"

Raven looked down at the pool deck, trying to pretend she was very interested in a green caterpillar crawling along a crack. "I don't want to swim."

"It looked like you just didn't want to go underwater," Robin said quietly.

"I don't want to do that, either." She lowered her chin a bit more until it was resting on her knees.

Robin pulled his goggles through the water absently. "Are you scared?"

"I don't want to," said Raven. As if somebody had poked her with a needle, she jumped out of her chair onto the deck to scoop up the caterpillar, which had crawled into a big puddle and couldn't get out. Its little legs were churning the air uselessly until Raven snatched it up, biting her lip, watching as it righted itself and started to wriggle up her arm. She looked back at Robin. "He was gonna drown."

"Caterpillars should be smart enough not to crawl into puddles if they can't swim."

"But he was gonna _drown."_

That didn't have anything to do with what Robin had said, and he really wished that people would just make sense when they talked but there was something about the way Raven held her arm so still as she shuffled over to the fence, kneeling down to let the caterpillar crawl into the grass and watching until she couldn't see it anymore. Something about it made Robin just nod and say, "Okay. You should come back; Starfire will be sad if she finds out somebody quit."

Then Bruce had finally explained everything to the others and he was gesturing sharply to lane four and sending Robin a _look_, one that meant if Robin didn't want to have a _talk _to go with it, he'd better get in the right lane and start swimming. Robin didn't like _talks_—they always ended with him in his room staring up at the ceiling and wishing he hadn't made Bruce so disappointed—so he dove under the water and was back in his lane and halfway to the flags in a single breath.


	7. Aerodynamically Impossible

**Flip Turn**

**Chapter Seven: Aerodynamically Impossible

* * *

**

Starfire liked her new name better. Before the summer, she'd been Koriand'r, back when she lived across the huge ocean, but now she was Starfire. Her daddy called her by her new name, but sometimes her mommy used the old, usually when she was in big trouble. She'd say it really fast, like she was spitting it out of her mouth as fast as she could, and her eyebrows would knit together and then Starfire knew she was about to be sent to her room. For about forever. Sometimes even an _hour._

But Starfire didn't get in trouble a lot. Most people told her that this was because she was a good little girl, but she knew better. It was only because she was very, very good at getting _out _of trouble. She didn't really know how she did it, but it worked, and she hardly ever had to actually try. Trouble just melted away like the orange popsicles that the man in the white, musical truck brought to the pool every Friday afternoon. Before the summer, she'd never seen anything like it; there were a lot of things here that she'd never seen before. Most of the cars that Starfire had seen were brown and boring and didn't bring ice cream.

The ground burned her feet as she hopped across the parking lot, trying to jump from one shady spot to the next, but there just weren't enough and the safety of the water was _so _far away. It would be much easier if she could fly. Starfire grinned and decided to try it. She held her arms out, telling her brain to forget about the stinging, sizzling pavement, bent her knees and jumped as hard as she could, aiming for a cloud that had caught her eye just above the highest tree.

"What in the world are you doing?"

She crashed down to the pavement before Robin finished speaking, keeping her balance easily. "Trying to fly," she said, shifting her weight rapidly from one foot to the other so she wouldn't have to put one down for too long.

He narrowed his eyes. "You can't fly, though."

"I can if I try hard enough," said Starfire.

"It's aerodynamically impossible!"

She stared back at him, crossing her arms and shrugging. "I do not know what that means so it does not—doesn't—matter," she annunciated slowly. Her daddy said that she had to work on her talking, because they talked a different way across the huge ocean and she needed to learn since this was her new home now. Sometimes, people shortened words to make them easier to say. Starfire had done that in her old home, too, but now she had to learn it this way. It was funny how it took her even longer to say something that was supposed to make the words _shorter_.

"But you can't just say something doesn't matter just because you don't know—"

"Yes I can," said Starfire. "I could fly if I wanted to; I just don't have the time to practice."

"You _can't _fly!"

"My daddy says I can do anything I put my mind to." It was getting way too hot for Starfire to be standing there just talking, and her feet were probably about to burn off, so she started walking away from Robin, as fast as she could to get to the shade right inside the pool gate. Robin followed, saying a lot of stuff with really big words that didn't really matter to Starfire; she was perfectly able to find out what they meant if she wanted to, but as long as they weren't interesting, there was no point.

And anyway, it was time for swim practice.

Starfire already knew how to swim, and some of her cousins had thought that she was trying to learn how when she told them about the swim team—but that wasn't right. Swim team was one of the funniest things that Starfire had ever heard of, but it was also one of the most _fun,_ so that was okay. Almost as fun as roller coasters. Well, actually, nowhere near as fun as roller coasters, but still pretty fun. She'd met about a million new friends and they were all really nice, even the ones who acted like they weren't.

Swim team was funny because it was all about a bunch of people trying to learn things about swimming when they _already knew_ how to swim. Also, the water was boxed up in concrete with stuff in it that cleaned all of the diseases out; Vic had told her because she'd asked him on the first day why the water smelled funny. Starfire was used to swimming in rivers and ponds, where the water was free and sometimes fast and had rocks and sand at the bottom—but never stuff that smelled funny. People on the swim team were also way too careful about keeping things neat. Her mommy liked things neat, and made Starfire clean her room every Sunday, but that was just pointless. At swim team, you had to be in the right lane all the time, swimming the exact right way, and you couldn't even change when you wanted to, and if you didn't follow every single one of the rules exactly right, you got DQ'd, which basically meant you didn't get one of the neat ribbons that were lots of different colors (Starfire's favorite one was purple).

But that was okay. She had been DQ'd before, and she didn't mind because everybody cheered for her when she climbed out of the water. Besides, she got a blue index card, which was almost as nice as a purple ribbon. Even though she had to give it back later.

The only thing was, Coach Bruce didn't really like it much (when you were on the swim team, you had to have a grownup teach you stuff, even if you already knew how to swim). He also didn't really like it when Starfire didn't listen to him enough (she _tried,_ but the butterflies on the fence were so much more important than listening, red and orange and her daddy had said that this kind was called Painted Lady…). So Starfire reluctantly turned her head back to what he was saying, something about ears and feet and streamline and then he wanted Kitten to come show everybody how to dive.

Kitten tightened her ponytail and pushed her way past Starfire, giving her an ugly look as she went. She shouldn't get to be the one to show everyone; she splashed people too much and said mean things to Gar. But that definitely didn't stop her from walking all the way up to the edge of the pool, like a queen, until her toes hung over the side of the pool, right in the middle of the center lane. And in a single, sharp movement, she had pushed up and out with her legs, arms coming up tight around her ears, body arching like she was trying to grab herself a little piece of the sky and take it down into the water with her as she entered it smoothly with just a tiny splash.

Seconds later, her head poked up through the surface. "How was _that?"_ She squeezed the water from her ponytail and grinned up at the crowd of kids.

"Great job, Kitten," said Coach Bruce. "Don't use the ladder, please," he added, and she fell back into the water and swam around to the side.

Behind her, she felt Gar let his breath out in a giant puff of air. "I don't think I could do that in a hundred zillion years."

"Me neither," Terra squeaked, shrinking back behind the first starting block and biting her nails.

"You don't have to." Coach Bruce interrupted a few other kids who were saying how it was way too hard. "You probably won't learn to dive like that for a very long time; we're just going to work on the basics today."

"Good, because I think I can wait until I'm seven to learn how to dive like that," said Terra, skirting around the block and hesitantly stepping forward. "…Or eight. Or twenty-four."

Coach Bruce kind of halfway-laughed, except Starfire didn't see what was funny about wanting to wait until you were seven (she was _already_ seven, but if she'd wanted to wait until she was eight, she could). "We'll see," he said. "In the meantime, who wants to be first?"

Most of the kids took a few steps away from him. Starfire didn't move, raising her hand. "I can!"

"Umm, what if we already know how to dive?" Vic asked. He was older than most of the others, not a lot older—he wasn't even as old as her big sister, Komand'r—but he'd been on the swim team for a few years so he knew a lot.

"If you already know, then you can practice when it's your turn," said Coach Bruce. "Those who already know how to dive will be doing something else later."

Starfire couldn't wait to find out what 'something else' was. But right now, she wanted to dive, because it looked so much like flying when Kitten did it, so she raised her hand a little higher. "I can go first now, really!"

He had her sit right on the edge of the deck with her feet in the water—she didn't really want to sit, because she wanted to dive like Kitten, but she didn't say anything.

"Do you remember how to streamline?" He didn't look _quite _as big when he was sitting next to her.

She put her arms up to squeeze her ears, one palm on top of the other, and nodded—it was really hard to nod when your hands were over your head like that.

"And do you remember what I said about your hands?"

_Whoops. _Maybe she shouldn't have spent so much time watching the butterflies. "Umm…not really."

He sighed, but when she smiled up at him the tired look went away. "Your hands need to go in the water first—even before your head—and try to keep your ears covered."

Starfire put her hands down and used them to cover her ears. "Like this?"

"No," he laughed, taking her hands and putting them back like she'd had them before. "Keep them covered with your arms."

"Oh-oh, okay!"

"Alright, now I'm going to count to three, and then you're going to fall in the water and I'm going to help, okay?"

She narrowed her eyes at him, wrinkling her nose. "I think you mean that you're gonna push me in."

Coach Bruce looked a little surprised. "It's not that—"

"Oh, it's fine, I like being pushed in!" Starfire giggled.

"You _do?"_ Jade interrupted from the side of the pool, staring at her intently and seeming somewhere between scared and amazed.

"I think she likes everything," said Vic.

Starfire felt Coach Bruce's hands on her shoulders—they practically covered her whole back. "Ready?"

"Yup!" She squeezed the sides of her face with her arms, so hard that she was kind of afraid that maybe her head would crack open like the eggs her daddy cooked for breakfast.

"One, two, th—"

Starfire didn't hear the rest because there was water in her ears. She tried so hard to keep her hands together, pretended that they were super glued—and they did stay together, she realized. She wasn't sure if it was a good dive but at least there was that.

Surfacing, she took in a deep breath and yelled, "Did I do it?"

From his perch on the starting block, Wally nodded vigorously. "Totally; you were almost as good as I was when I first tried it!"

Starfire swam back to the side of the pool—she remembered not to use the ladder—feeling powerful and important, and it had kind of been like flying, when she tried to remember how it'd felt before she'd hit the water. "Can we do that again, _please?"_

Coach Bruce smiled down at her as she pulled herself up, one of his hands resting on the block. "Let's make sure everyone else gets a turn first, okay? Terra, why don't you try it?"

Terra made a sound that sounded kind of like a scared kitten and hid behind Gar's starting block.

It took awhile for everybody to get a turn—some of them didn't really _want _turns, it seemed like, but if it looked like they were scared, Wally started chanting their names really loud, and after that it was hard to just say you weren't going to do it. Even the ones who thought something bad would happen ended up being okay: well, one of Terra's pigtails came undone, and then her clip sunk to the bottom of the pool and Coach Bruce had to get it back, but everything was fine besides that. The only one who really refused to try was Raven, who kept saying she'd quit except her mommy kept making her come to practice to watch. Sometimes, like now, she'd put her feet in the water, but she'd get really mad if anyone splashed her.

Starfire sat down next to her, tapping her on the shoulder. "You really d—_don't _want to try?"

"No," said Raven, scooting away from the edge as if she expected it to bite her. After a few seconds, her eyes turned back to Starfire, who'd been waiting patiently, and there was a brightness that she'd never seen on Raven before. "…But Terra's hair looks really funny."

"We should fix it!"

"…I guess we could. If she doesn't mind."

They'd waved Terra over and had gotten her to sit still in front of them when Coach Bruce said that everyone who knew how to dive needed to line up behind lane one. But they didn't know how to dive so they just stayed there and watched the bigger kids line up—actually, some of them weren't big, some of them were Starfire's age and Robin was so little that he kind of looked six, but for some reason, they seemed bigger because they knew how.

And then, Coach Bruce was definitely holding a hula hoop. It was probably the weirdest thing Starfire had ever seen in her life. Including the time Komand'r got her hair stuck in the front door.

"Is that what I think it is?" asked Raven slowly, leaning over to whisper in her ear.

Terra turned around, yelping when she yanked her hair out of Starfire's grasp. Rubbing her head, she nodded. "Uh huh, and at least it's not pink 'cos that would be just too _weird."_

"I like pink," said Starfire. "But I like purple better. Could it maybe be pink _and_ purple?"

Raven laughed. Starfire had never seen her do that, ever.

Vic found the words to ask what the whole team had probably been thinking. "Err, coach? What are you going to do with that?"

"I think the better question would be, what are _you_ going to do with it?" said Coach Bruce. Raising his voice to speak to everyone, he continued, "Diving isn't passive; you don't just fall into the water right underneath the blocks. You need to use your legs to push yourself up and out, towards the other end of the pool. We're not diving down." He pointed to the bottom of the pool directly under the first starting block. "When do we ever swim a race down there?"

"Never?" guessed Gar, who'd found his way over to where Starfire was sitting.

"Exactly, so we're never going to aim down there when we dive."

Wally wrinkled his forehead, hands on the starting block—he was in front of the line. "That's great an' all, but what does that have to do with a hula hoop?"

"I mentioned aiming—we're going to give you something to aim for. You're going to dive…through this." He indicated the little green circle.

"No way!"

"Like, you're gonna put it in the _air?"_

"This is like some kinda circus or something…"

Coach Bruce held up a hand. "That's enough. You can complain about it after you've proven that it won't help you dive better. But until then, Wally, you're first."

Wally stepped onto the block, fighting back giggles. "I just go through it, right?"

A nod answered him, the hoop held right in the middle of the lane at a height that nobody could possibly get through. "Whenever you're ready."

Blue goggles came down over his eyes and he took a breath with such force that Starfire could hear him all the way from where she was sitting, then he was off the block and in the air, higher than even Kitten had gone when she'd shown them—and somehow, he got through, though just barely and the way he entered the water looked a little clumsy.

And that—that _really _looked like flying. Starfire felt the smile stretch all the way up to her ears.

"Woah," said Wally when he surfaced. "That was…actually kind of awesome."

"I want to do it!" Kitten pushed her way in front of Vic, who stepped aside and let her without a word.

"Me, too!" said Gar from his seat. "Just…when I'm seven."

"Yeah," Terra agreed. "Seven."

Some of the kids loved the hoop, and some of them were scared of it—Karen almost refused to go, but Vic convinced her. But Robin didn't seem to care one way or the other. He was one of the last to go, and just stood there waiting like he'd done it a million times before. Actually, maybe he _had_. Robin lived with Coach Bruce, he'd said so, but he wasn't his daddy. Robin wouldn't say why he didn't live with his real parents. Starfire had tried to ask once, but he'd told her that he had to go get some water, even though he'd had a full water bottle sitting right next to him.

Coach Bruce held the hoop a little bit higher for him. His dive was better than Kitten's and he didn't splash at all.

When they had finished diving, they were supposed to climb out of the pool from the side, right next to where Starfire was sitting (except for Vic because he'd had an operation and was allowed to use the ladder). She clapped for them when they got out, but she didn't clap for Robin: hands on her hips, she turned her head up to stick her tongue out.

"So _there!"_ she pronounced, wrinkling her nose.

He pulled his goggles off and blinked at her. "What are you talking about?"

"You said that people could not fly because…because of…because of the dynamics of the air, and you were wrong!"

"I was not! When did you see a flying person while I wasn't looking?"

Starfire pointed straight back at him. "You _just did."_


	8. Shark

**Flip Turn**

**Chapter Eight: Shark

* * *

**

"But I'll die!"

"You're not going to die."

"…But I'll _die!"_

Vic sighed, trying to think of something to say that would make Terra come out from under her towel. She'd pulled it over her head, hands holding it in place tightly at her chin, face hidden so only her nose poked out a little bit. "Terra, didn't you already know you were going to be swimming IM tonight?"

The towel nodded slightly. "But I thought that maybe if I asked real nicely Coach Bruce wouldn't make me do it…"

"It doesn't work that way," he said. His father said that a lot. You couldn't just decide you didn't want to go to school, didn't want to take medicine when you were sick, didn't want to come inside when it got dark—it doesn't work that way. "He can't just take you out of the event."

"Why can't he, though? I don't want to do it! I'll die!"

"He can't 'cos it takes a lot of time to plan swim meets and it's really complicated, and it would mess everything up. And you're not going to die." Vic wasn't exactly sure how it would mess everything up, but he knew that it would.

The towel made a little sobbing noise. "But—it's—it's so—" A small hand grabbed the rusty fence, steadying herself. "…Long."

"It's only four laps; not that long. C'mon, at least take the towel off your head. Nobody can even hear you like that."

Reluctantly, she shrugged the towel off, pink fabric falling in a puddle at her feet, and then Terra was staring up at him. She still had the ribbons in her hair that she'd arrived with, except one was coming untied and trying to find its way to the ground. "I hate swim meets," she said miserably, crossing her arms, narrowing her eyes as if it was all Vic's fault.

"You liked swim meets last week."

"Because I never had to swim hard things! This is _way _too hard and it's _not _fair—I'm not even seven!"

It might not have been, actually, but a lot of things weren't fair and Vic thought that getting used to it now would be the best thing for Terra. After three meets of getting worse times than he'd had since he was seven, Vic had learned a lot about things that weren't fair. He offered Terra the bottle of water that he'd found forgotten at her feet. "Drink half of that, okay?"

"I'm not thirsty though."

"You can't wait till you're thirsty; that means you already didn't drink enough," said Vic.

Terra rolled her eyes but took a few tentative sips from the bottle, except she stopped when Karen tapped her on the shoulder. She turned to wave at her, expression squeezed into some kind of fake enthusiasm that didn't fit. "Hi! Can you make Coach Bruce tell them that I don't have to swim IM?"

Karen paused for a moment, then smiled and shook her head. "Actually, I was just coming over here to make sure that you knew that it was almost time for you to go."

"But…I'll _die!" _

"No, worry wart, you're not gonna die," Karen sighed. "I think you should probably put your cap on, though."

Terra wrinkled her nose, reluctantly undoing her ribbons. "Eww, I hate that thing: it's too tight and it pulls my hair and it must be too small because I can't get it over my head…"

Reaching into Terra's swim bag, which was wide open with most of her stuff falling out of it, Karen fished out a bright purple cap, stretching it with both hands as if she was really trying to figure out if it was too small. "Looks okay to me." She presented one corner of the cap to Terra, who held it cautiously. "Here, I'll help you. Hang onto it real tight, bend down and put it next to your forehead."

"But…"

"One, two, three!" Karen stretched the cap over Terra's head, almost too fast to see how she did it, but she did a good job; there were only a few pieces of hair sticking out in the back. Vic was kind of glad that he was a boy and had short hair so he wouldn't have to worry about that.

Biting her lip, Terra shifted from one foot to the other, hand clutching for the fence again before she took a deep breath. "You really, really swear that nothing bad's gonna happen to me if I do it?"

Karen nodded. "Cross my heart and hope to die, stick a needle in my eye."

"Oww, that would _hurt!"_

"So I guess you know I'm telling the truth, then," said Karen. She started twirling her goggles around one of her fingers.

"Can you come with me?" Terra's shoulders slumped against the fence in a way that couldn't ever be comfortable.

"No, but I can," said Vic. "She's not doing IM tonight. But I am, and Robin and I think Jade, too."

Terra breathed a heavy sigh. "Oh, good, I was scared that I was the only girl."

Before either of them could say anything to that, Terra's name was called, and her eyes got really round for a moment, and Vic thought that she still wanted to hide under her towel for a while longer, but then she zipped up her bag, kicked it closer to the fence, and followed the Clerk of Course to the benches. She turned her head sharply when she was halfway there, yelling back at them, _"Please_ come sit with me real soon, okay, Vic?"

"I'll be there as soon as I can," he said, trying to keep his voice as calm as he could.

As soon as he said it, somebody on the blocks false started, one of the big kids doing short free, and Terra cringed at the sound of the gun, holding her ears. She just stood there for a few seconds, refusing to move, and Vic thought that he'd have to go convince her to go sit on the benches when Terra finally saw Jade and the fear melted away as she grabbed onto her arm and started telling a story about the lifeguard stand. Vic let out the breath he hadn't realized he'd been holding.

"Think she can do it?" Karen asked him once Terra was too far away to hear.

Vic shrugged. "I think if we don't tell her she can't, she just might."

* * *

He used to like IM, but now he didn't. Up until now, he'd gotten lucky and hadn't had to swim it; probably, it had always been a matter of time. Either that, or Coach Bruce was waiting for him to get the breaststroke kick again. He'd said that everyone had to swim it, at least once, if they were able. Coach Babs had never made anyone swim something they didn't want to do, but Vic had always done it because not many people were good at IM, and you didn't have to be fast to be good, as long as you didn't get tired. But now that he was ten, you _did _have to be fast, and he was almost positive that he wasn't fast enough.

And Terra was right. It _was _a long way.

IM was short for 'individual medley,' not that thing on the computer that Jade had thought it was at first. Four lengths of the pool, one for each stroke, and you had to do all of it in the right order or you'd be disqualified. The first time he'd done it, Vic had messed up and did breaststroke after butterfly. He tried not to think about that.

"Hi, I'm Wally and I'm eight, what's your name and why are you wearing a cap if you're a boy?"

Vic looked up, the familiar voice bringing him out of his thoughts. Wally was poking the boy sitting next to him with his index card, not listening at all to the lady who told him to sit down right now. The boy wasn't answering, looking down at his card as if it was a really good book he couldn't stop reading, not even long enough to reply. So Wally poked him again, this time in the middle of his forehead where latex met skin.

The boy shrugged. "Garth, and I wear it so I'll go faster."

"But it makes you look funny!"

"I don't mind," said Garth politely, though he turned back to his index card and didn't look up again.

Terra's bench was called to stand behind the blocks, and she cast a brief look at Vic before getting up, eyebrows pulled together like she was at the doctor expecting to get a shot. Vic tried to look encouraging and didn't know if it worked, exactly. Then she turned, mumbling under her breath, "Butterfly, backstroke, breaststroke, freestyle…butterfly, backstroke, breaststroke, freestyle…"

"Wally, sit down, _now, _we're gonna get in trouble," said Robin from the end of the bench. He looked more than a little bit upset by the fact that he was at the end of the bench. The faster times were in the middle.

"I'm never in trouble," he returned, but then he did sit down, leaning over Garth's shoulder to read his card. A second later, he was pointing a disbelieving finger at Garth. "Okay, there is no _way _that's really your time."

Garth just shrugged again. "If you don't believe it, I guess you'll find out soon if it really is or not."

Vic stopped listening to them around the time that Wally started wondering if he could jump over the fence, focusing on Terra's heat when the starter told them to step up. She did, after a glance to either side of her to make sure that everyone else was getting up. At the beep, she did a clumsy half-dive into the water, more falling off the block headfirst than an actual dive, but considering that she'd just learned last week, it was really good.

Her race took a long time. Most of the eight and unders took awhile to finish the IM, but Jade was a lot faster than Terra and when she got to her last lap, Vic was worried that she wouldn't be able to keep going, because she held the side of the pool gasping for breath for several seconds before she forced herself to turn around. When she finished, the timer in her lane had to pull her out of the pool, and as soon as he let her go she flopped down onto the deck, hands pressed into the concrete and shoulders heaving. She didn't get up for awhile, not even when the next heat was called to step up. Wally kept gesturing at Garth's lane and trying to get him to wave, but Garth wouldn't look at him. Vic couldn't decide if Robin looked embarrassed, nervous, or both. He didn't have time to decide, because a split second later, Robin was in the water, along with the rest of his heat.

It turned out that it really _was _Garth's time. Whatever it was.

Garth swam like a normal person would breathe, as if it would be harder for him to _not_ swim than it was _to_ swim. The only person that Vic had seen even come close was Wally, but it was pretty clear that even he wasn't going to beat Garth. It was insane. He must have been swimming since he was a baby…maybe even since he was _born_. Maybe he'd been born underwater or something. It sure looked like it. Vic was starting to be glad that he wasn't eight anymore, just for today; at least this way he didn't have to race a shark.

He actually wasn't all that far ahead of the others; Vic counted about five seconds between him and Wally, with Robin touching the wall a second after that. Wally jerked his head to Garth's lane, yanking his goggles off his head and just staring like he didn't believe it, but Garth just climbed out of the pool and didn't look back, gathering up his towel and flinging it over his shoulder. He did stop to talk to the other coach, though, a taller lady with red hair like Starfire's. She did most of the talking, and Garth did most of the polite nodding. But that was okay, because Wally was doing more than enough talking to make up for it.

"And I mean, it's like he has _gills _or something, you know like how a fish can breathe underwater?"

"I know what gills are, Wally." Robin didn't look happy. Though, for once, Wally didn't look exactly thrilled, either.

"It's not fair, if you're that fast they should make you swim with the nine and tens, or even the big kids, yeah, he shouldn't be allowed to race people who don't happen to be fish…oh, good luck, Vic!" Wally waved at him briefly before he took a deep breath and went right back to listing all the reasons why it wasn't fair. "No, go this way, we are _not _talking to coach right now, he'll just have to get over it—Robin, come _on, _it's not like we did anything bad!"

Vic sighed as he stepped onto the block. Things just didn't work that way: Garth beat them because he was faster, and Wally would have to accept it. Except, right now Vic mostly just wished that at least some of the good luck that Wally had wished for him could be real. He was going to need it. They'd combined his heat with the girls, and he'd seen Karen swim enough to know that girls were just as good at swimming as boys were…but Vic still didn't want to lose to girls.

A loud voice rose over the crowd. _"Go, Cyborg!"_

"Be _quiet,_ Wally…"

After that, Vic couldn't think about anything but swimming.

The water seemed hotter than it'd been earlier, even though that made no sense because it was much later in the day now—and he pushed down the panic that it was too hot, that it would make him slow. Shoved it away to some corner of his mind that hopefully wouldn't stop him from getting his arms out of the water all the way, again and again and it was so hard, he couldn't kick very well because of his legs and he'd lost a lot of muscle and by some miracle he'd made it to the wall except, oh god, there were three more laps… _Stop it. Just swim. _

At least the butterfly was over, and he could finally breathe a little bit on backstroke, and once he'd started the third lap he kept seeing Wally cheering for him out of the corner of his eye every time he surfaced—but that just made him sicker, so he found a spot at the other end and stared hard at it, pretended that the little black cross at the other end of the lane was the only thing that existed in the universe. And when it was finally time to swim freestyle, Vic knew exactly how Terra must have felt, because it took every bit of will left in him to force his fingers to let go of that wall, force his head to drop back underwater and his arms to work again.

After an eternity that somehow also took no time at all, he was gasping for breath as he held tight to that final wall, rough and real under his shaking hand. He didn't let himself stay there, though, even if his body wanted to stop working and go to sleep for at least three days. Vic hauled himself out of the water—you only got pulled out if you were tiny and scared and six, like Terra—managing to find his voice so he could ask what his time was.

"2:08.59."

He took a breath. He'd been faster than two minutes before, but he'd also been slower—he'd been seven, but at least it was something. At least it was five seconds faster than when his mom had timed him last Saturday.

At least he wasn't DQd.

He picked up his towel and went over to talk to Coach Bruce.

"Your breaststroke kick looked much better." The words held a measure of distraction, but not much, since Vic had figured out that Coach Bruce was able to focus on a lot of different things at once.

Vic nodded. "Thanks, I've been practicing."

"I noticed. It's paid off." He glanced at his heat sheet for half a second. "Your next event is long free, right?"

Vic nodded. "What kind of time do you want me to get?"

Coach Bruce put down his heat sheet, stopped watching the older girls swimming IM and turned his full attention on Vic. It was a little overwhelming. "The kind that involves you doing the best that you can. That was a good swim, Vic." He paused, then continued seriously, "Don't worry so much."

And it was kind of hard to worry when Vic looked over at the other team's coach. Or, more specifically, at the little girl behind her in a blue dress—really little, probably about four—who was braiding her hair, mouth halfway open in concentration, eyes narrowed and focused.

"I'm gonna make you beautiful, Coach Ivy."

Coach Ivy smirked, passing the girl a hair clip when she held out her tiny hand. "That's wonderful, Kole. Is that your brother in lane two?"

Kole nodded, though she didn't take her eyes off the coach's hair.

Vic had started to head back to his seat when Coach Bruce touched his elbow. "Can you please tell Robin that I want to see him?"

"Sure," said Vic, frowning despite himself. He really hoped that Coach Bruce didn't want to yell at him about losing to Garth. He didn't _think_ that was what it was, but Robin was already so obsessed with winning and…it just wouldn't be good. At all.

When he got back to the tent, Wally jumped on him. Literally.

"Oh my god, that was amazing, you sure showed all those girls—I can't believe they even let them swim with you, but it didn't matter 'cos you kicked their butts anyway—"

"Umm…Wally…I need that shoulder for the long free."

He let him go, laughing. "Whoopsie, sorry. Robin, wasn't that awesome?"

Robin looked up from the book he was reading. "It was pretty good."

Vic almost didn't say it, the words stuck in his throat until he forced them out because he _had_ agreed to it, and he didn't really think it would be bad… "Oh yeah, Robin, coach said you were supposed to come talk to him."

He'd dropped the book before Vic got the whole sentence out, eyes immediately clouding over as he got up from his chair. "I'll be back in a minute," he muttered, pushing past Vic and Wally, not even acknowledging Starfire when she came running up to him holding something clutched between two hands. It made Vic feel cold. He really hoped that saying it hadn't been a bad idea.

Vic let Starfire show him the daddy longlegs spider that she'd found, nodding as it crawled up her arm and she said that she was going to name it Silkie, and Terra stood behind her moaning about how disgusting it was. He heard himself explaining to her what the spiders ate and why they were good spiders that wouldn't hurt people, but his mind was in the pool, except it wasn't the older girls he was racing, it was Garth, the quiet human shark, and he was nothing but a failure who couldn't even do the one thing he was supposed to do…

Shuddering, Vic shot his hand out to pull Silkie out of Terra's hair.


	9. Get it Yourself

**Flip Turn**

**Chapter Nine: Get it Yourself

* * *

**

"Look! I have rings on my ears like Komand'r!"

Well, he didn't think they _really _looked like the purple stones that Komand'r always had in her ears, but they looked pretty cool, anyway. Starfire had hung two of her ribbons from her ears, the purple ones, looping them around by the little, gold string. And she was showing _everybody_.

Wally nodded. "Neat! What are they for?"

Starfire's grin faded into confusion. "I really do not—don't know, because Koma wo—wouldn't let me go to the store with her when she did hers—all I know is that when she came back, she had shiny, purple rocks in her ears—"

"Nooo, your ribbons," he said, laughing. "What events are the purple ones for?"

"Oh! Events!" Her forehead wrinkled thoughtfully, eyes scrunched up in concentration. "I…hmm…" She brightened. "Do not care! But they make very good rings for your ears."

A long, thin hand plucked one of the ribbons right off Starfire's left ear, snatching it away and out of reach. "Maybe if you _learned _to care, you'd stop finishing last," Komand'r drawled, eyes scanning the back of the ribbon as a smirk crawled up her face.

Starfire tilted her head way up, arms held out as she tried to get the ribbon back, but she was a lot shorter than Komand'r and it didn't really work. At all. "Koma, give it _back!"_

Komand'r looked from the ribbon to Starfire and back again. "How about I don't and say I did?"

Starfire didn't look like her big sister at all. Where she had red hair and green eyes that were always excited about something, Komand'r's hair was dark, to go with her eyes—and her eyes _were _usually excited about something, except it was never a good kind of something. She didn't really talk to them much because she was in the older practice, but on Fridays they didn't really practice, and the team always got ribbons together. As long as Starfire didn't talk to her, get anywhere near her, or breathe the same air as she did, she'd be fine. Komand'r was loud and talked to everyone and might have been a lot like Wally if she weren't so _mean; _he would never take somebody's ribbon, especially not Starfire's. A lot of the big kids liked to talk to her because she could tell them stories about Africa and about how stupid her sister was.

Wally kind of hated her a little bit.

"How about you _do _and say you didn't, or I'm gonna tell Coach Bruce," he challenged, glaring into the black eyes.

Komand'r laughed—it was the same voice that Starfire had and yet it was completely different, and Wally liked Starfire's _way_ better. "Right. Uh huh, shrimp. How old are you, like, four?"

Starfire bit her fingernails, taking a step away from her sister.

"I'm _eight _and you'd better give it back to her, or I'll tell, and then you'll have to do pushups."

Sighing extravagantly, Komand'r held the ribbon between two fingertips as if it were a dead mouse. "Here you go, sister dear. Only a baby seven year old would want a sixth place ribbon anyway." She let it flutter to the pool deck, spun around and walked off to talk to three of the older boys.

Starfire stooped hurriedly to pick it up, holding it close to her chest, eyes still wide. "Thank you."

"I didn't do anything," said Wally. "Hey, let's go see if we're allowed to have more juice, 'kay?"

Her eyes shifted back to normal, rounding out into the happiness that Wally was used to seeing there. He hadn't realized how weird she'd looked without it until it suddenly came back. She nodded, looping the ribbon back over her ear with defiance as they walked.

* * *

Wally was thinking that it would maybe be a good idea to throw his cup in the trash can instead of on the ground when a quarter sunk to the bottom of the last step near the lifeguard's stand distracted him and made him forget all about trash cans.

"Cool! Money!" He splashed down the steps to get it, but a pale hand shot out and stopped him.

"It's _mine,_ though; I dropped it," said Raven, and when he turned to look at her, she kind of scooted away from him with her eyes down as if she'd just said something she wasn't supposed to say.

Wally sighed. "I never find anything good," he muttered, starting up the steps backwards without even holding onto the rail. And he really didn't—he'd only found a penny once and it wasn't even on heads. Robin was really good at finding things except he never wanted them.

"Wait!" Raven edged a little closer to the lowest step, though she didn't put her feet in. "I…I can't get it."

"Why not?"

She went back to looking at the ground. "I…I don't want to swim."

Wally rolled his eyes. "If you wanted to get it that bad, it wouldn't matter if you didn't want to swim. It would take like two seconds, maybe, and that's if you didn't want to be fast."

"Can you get it for me, maybe?" she asked slowly, voice becoming quieter and quieter with each word.

"You know how to swim, and it's _your _quarter, like you said. You get it." Maybe she just didn't want to get wet. A lot of the girls hated getting in the water in the morning; they said it was cold and they'd scream if you splashed them (which was kind of funny, especially the big girls). Except it wasn't that early in the morning, since they never practiced early on Fridays, and the water wasn't even cold today.

Raven gripped the metal rail that ran from the bottom of the steps to just in front of the edge of the pool, knuckles white. "But I'd have to…to…"

"Who has a quarter?" Gar's voice was really loud, right in Wally's ear.

He pointed at Raven. "She does, but she doesn't want to get it."

"Ooo, can I have it, then?"

"Naw," said Wally. "I think Raven will get it in a sec. Now what were you saying?"

"I'd have to go underwater and I don't want to!" she pronounced in a single breath, eyes snapping shut and hands tightening on the rail. If she held it any tighter, she'd snap it in half like Starfire had accidentally snapped her goggles in half last week.

He just looked at her for a minute because he wasn't really sure what to say. But Gar thought of something to say, so that was good. "Sometimes I don't want to go underwater, either, 'cos it's hard to come back up, 'specially if you're tired. Did I tell you about this one time when I almost _drowned?"_

"I _saw _it," Raven said. "But I'm still not going underwater."

Wally brightened, finally thinking of something to say, because Gar's drowning story reminded him of what else had happened that day, when Raven had cried a whole lot and didn't come back. "Is it because you're scared?"

"No!"

"Yeah, but it sort of looks like it's because you're scared."

"I just don't want to," said Raven.

"Okay, you don't have to." Wally nodded. "…But then you won't get the quarter."

Raven leaned over the steps, staring at the quarter as if she wanted to melt all the water away with her eyes. "You don't get it. I _can't_. It's…bad."

"Money is _so_ not bad," said Gar. He narrowed his eyes in thought for a moment. "Unless you meant going underwater, because that is kinda bad sometimes, especially when you choke and then you can't breathe and you really hope that you can get back to the wall because—"

"Not helping," Wally muttered under his breath, seeing the way Raven's eyes flickered with something that wasn't good at _all _and should never be in anyone's eyes, not ever. And then he knew that he had to help her, even though he wasn't sure why she needed help, exactly, because nobody should have to look that way. Wally didn't like that look and didn't ever want to see it again. Ever. So he stepped back into the water, up to his waist, turned so he was facing Raven and smiled up at her. "Seriously. It's fine. I'll go in with you."

"Me, too!" Gar jumped into the water from the side. "And I'm really glad this is the shallow end," he added once he'd surfaced.

"Why can't you just get it for me?" she begged, hands still wrapped tight around the rail.

"Because what about the next time you drop something in the pool—who's gonna help you then? Are you gonna pick it up with your brain or something?"

"I _wish_ I could," said Raven miserably. Whatever had happened that day when Gar had almost drowned, it had to have been bad, because he hadn't seen anyone so scared of going underwater in his whole life.

"Oh, c'mon, this is the shallow end, like I said." Gar shrugged. "Who's afraid of the _shallow end?_ You can touch the bottom and stuff!"

Raven put one foot on the first step, then the other. She was wearing shorts over her suit but didn't seem to care that she was about to get them wet. "You won't…you won't push me, will you?"

"No way, Kitten tries to push me in all the time, and I _hate _it," said Gar.

"But what if you're lying?"

Wally laughed. "If we're lying, you can tell coach, and we'll have to do twenty pushups for lying and twenty more for pushing you and probably about fifty more for not having our toes pointed the right way or something."

"Your toes are supposed to be out if you're doing breaststroke," Raven said as she moved down another step, the water lapping around her knees. Wally backed away from her as she walked, letting her follow him down to the last step. "And I'm not going any farther down."

"Okay, you don't have to, it's right there, see?" He pointed at the shiny circle in the middle of the last step. "Sometimes it's hard to get all the way to the bottom of the pool, but this is on the steps, so it'll be easy. You can just reach down and get it, but you have to go under a little bit 'cos your arms aren't long enough."

"Yeah, I see it," she murmured, biting her lip. She didn't look like she had any intention of doing anything _but _seeing it.

"Now we'll count to three and you go under and get it!" said Gar, leaning against the side of the pool and tracing his name along the deck with his finger.

She lowered herself to her knees, looking down into the water. "Do I have to?"

"Nope," said Wally. He sighed loudly, letting his eyes fall back to the money on the stairs. "You just won't get the quarter, and that will be sad."

Raven didn't say anything for a few seconds, long enough for Wally to look up at her to try and find out why, and the next thing she said sounded like she was saying it from inside…from inside something bad. Like a grave. Or a haunted house (the bad kind, not the ones in carnivals). "You won't…hurt me?"

"It will be wet," said Wally. "And kind of squishy. But it doesn't _hurt_ or nothing."

As she reached down to the bottom of the step as far as her arms would go, her eyes went from terrified to hopeful to the haunted-house look and then finally, by some miracle, snapped back to normal. "You'd better not be lying, Wally West," she proclaimed. And the second she finished saying it, she squeezed her eyes shut, took in a huge breath, and plunged her face into the water, having to grab at the quarter twice before she got her fingers around it. Her head was back up an instant later, half of her hair dry and the other half dripping as she breathed in and out, staring hard down into her hand.

Gar was saying something about how didn't she see that it hadn't really hurt after all, but she was too lost in some spell to hear him. Finally, finally, her breathing returned to normal and her eyes shifted away from her hand to focus on Wally. "Did I just do that?"

"Pretty much!" Wally stepped quickly around Raven and climbed out of the pool, two steps at a time. "Coach Bruce, Coach Bruce, come see what Raven did!"

Coach Bruce was talking to Robin about something but Wally grabbed his hand and dragged him over to the steps. He tried to explain on the way. "She dropped some money at the bottom of the pool—well, it wasn't really the _very _bottom, but it was just as good as if it had been, 'cos she wanted me to get it but I told her that she should get it herself and so then Gar jumped in the pool and—"

The look on Raven's face when they got to the steps made Wally stop talking. She was standing there, a few feet away from the steps, baggy, green shorts trying to float off of her—and she had a knowing kind of smirk on her face that looked like it belonged on somebody a lot bigger than seven.

"Hi, coach." She grinned and went all the way under the water, popping up a few seconds later to wave at him.

Coach Bruce didn't say anything. And didn't say anything. And then he still didn't _say _anything, just pulled Raven out of the pool and into his arms, and Wally didn't think he'd ever seen him smile like that. His shirt was soaked but he didn't seem to care. At all. The quarter fell out of Raven's hands, bouncing onto the pool deck and languidly rolling back into the water. Except it was okay, because this time she could get it herself.

Later, though, because Raven really didn't look like she wanted Coach Bruce to let her go.


	10. Cooperation

**Flip Turn**

**Chapter Ten: Cooperation

* * *

**

"I heard he was in the army. Like a general or something. Or maybe a king." 

"My brother said that one time, a few years ago, his team hung a dead cat up in the girls' bathroom."

"Eww!" Terra cried, hand flying to her mouth. "But where'd they find a dead cat?"

"Well, I guess they had to, like, kill it first."

_"Roy!"_

"What?" He held up his hands indignantly. "How else would they get a dead cat?"

Raven was good at listening, but she wasn't so great at talking. It usually didn't matter, because as long as she was quiet enough and didn't stare too much, nobody ever tried to get her to talk, so they wouldn't know. She didn't even really want to be over here, on the ground with her back leaned against the fence, looking up at the other kids with what she hoped was polite interest—but she had to, because she was waiting for Coach Bruce. She had to have a swim lesson, and her mom had said that if she didn't cooperate, she wouldn't get any dessert tonight…and Raven wasn't quite sure if dessert was worth a swim lesson, but she figured she'd at least give it a chance in case it was.

It seemed like everybody was over here, except Robin, who was sitting at a table all by himself doing homework. Well, actually, he looked more like he was just tapping his pencil irritably against the umbrella stand. Not even Raven did homework in the summer.

Robin had been acting really weird lately. He was even quieter than usual, except now he'd stopped swimming everything perfectly and started swimming like Wally—skipping every lap he could possibly skip without getting caught…only, it wasn't exactly like Wally, because he didn't smile when he did it, and it was almost like he _wanted _to get caught. Which he usually did. Robin wasn't very good at cheating. It didn't fit him, like a shirt that was three sizes too small.

"Be quiet, everybody, I know something even better." Kitten's triumphant voice pulled Raven out of her thoughts. The blonde girl paused for a moment, smirking as Gar and Terra edged a little closer to her chair so they could hear her, mouths slightly open. "He only has _one eye,"_ she stated at last, squeezing her right eye shut.

Jade sighed heavily. "You're _so_ lying. You always lie."

"I do not, and it's true: if you don't believe me, you can ask my daddy," Kitten returned, crossing her arms and looking down her nose at Jade. "He's a stroke and turn judge, been one for ages, so he knows _all _the coaches. And Coach Slade…" She paused, a wicked little smile curving up her face. "Has…_one…eye."_

Terra shivered. "That's really creepy. I wouldn't want him to stare at me."

"The other one's glass, or something else fake," said Kitten. "I can't remember which one's the real one, but we raced him last year and if you look at him you can definitely see it. And yeah, Terra, it's way creepy. It might scare six-year-olds like you."

"I still don't believe you," muttered Jade.

"Believe her," said Roy. "I saw it, too, and it's not the right color. The real one's blue, but this one is kinda a goldish brown."

Jade glared. "Do you want me to kick you again?"

"No, god, you're insane!" Roy switched places on the lounge chair so Wally was between him and Jade.

Raven would never have believed Kitten if Roy hadn't said it was true—she was always making up stories about how much money she had and what her daddy would buy for her (Raven would be perfectly happy to never see _her _daddy ever again). Terra liked to follow Kitten around, probably because she liked to make up stories, too. Most people didn't realize she was doing it, but Raven was good at finding liars, and Terra's eyes shifted to the side a little bit when she did it. Finding the lies was like a game.

But Raven didn't think she'd like Coach Slade's fake eye, either. It would be a lot worse than swim lessons, she was positive.

She didn't have time to think about it anymore, though, because Coach Bruce had almost finished putting the lane ropes up—Karen and Vic were helping but even with both of them put together, they couldn't push the gigantic spool that was so tall Raven couldn't touch the top of it even if she jumped. But Coach Bruce just got behind them and rolled the big spool into the corner like it was made of tissue paper or something.

Jade raised her voice as she noticed him, yelling over the other kids and pulling a brush through her hair. "Hey, coach, does the other team's coach really only have one eye? And was he really in the army?"

"And does he really kill cats?" Terra added fearfully.

"I don't think you need to worry about any of that," he said, smiling. "Ready to go, Raven?" He was looking down at her expectantly before she'd really prepared herself for it.

"I guess," she said, rising and slowly unhooking her fingers from the fence.

"Ooo, Rae-Rae's in _trouble!"_ sang Gar. "Only babies need swim lessons."

Raven felt her stomach do cartwheels inside of her as her face turned red. She kind of was in trouble, when she thought about it: none of the other kids were so bad that they had to have lessons, and she should have learned how to do all this stuff a long time ago, but she'd been too scared to do anything but sit on the side of the pool, except listening wasn't the same as _doing, _so now she couldn't keep up…

"She's not in trouble, but _you_ will be if you don't apologize," Coach Bruce said, voice carrying the same stern undercurrent that he'd used that time when Roy had pulled Terra's hair and she'd cried. The one that said that he meant business, and reminded everyone of how big he was, in case they'd forgotten.

Gar rolled his eyes, but he said sorry, and after a sidelong glance at Coach Bruce he said sorry again, and meant it this time.

"It's okay," Raven said, making herself look up at Coach Bruce. "I'm ready now."

Starfire waved at her. "When you finish doing the lessons, we can try to find a four-leaf clover!"

Raven swallowed the lump in her throat as she followed Coach Bruce to the shallow end, wishing she had the four-leaf clover _now._

* * *

"I'm sorry," she whispered, pulling off her goggles and dragging them through the water faster and faster, staring at them hard.

He reached out to stop her, took her goggles away until her hands stopped wanting to drag them underwater and hold them there. "I didn't see you do anything you need to be sorry for. Do you want to try again?"

Raven didn't really want to try again, not at all, but she'd looked at Coach Bruce's watch and saw that she had nineteen more minutes left of cooperating, so she nodded reluctantly, replacing her goggles over her eyes and staring hard at the sticks on the bottom of the pool. There were three of them, brightly colored and plastic and heavy enough so they would sink to the bottom really fast once you dropped them in—and she was supposed to go get them, but it wasn't working.

It was a long way down. Three whole feet, and it wasn't at all like the quarter on the bottom step, and Coach Bruce didn't look like Wally even a little bit, and Raven didn't know why that made it worse, but it _did._

At least his eyes were okay. They were dark and calm and relaxed, and they didn't yank Raven back to sinks and faucets and being a bad girl. So she pictured his eyes in her head as she took a deep breath and lowered herself underwater, feeling her throat close up a little bit as she fought the urge to claw her way to the surface.

Her fingers stretched for just one of the sticks, she didn't even care what color it was, and Raven wanted to snap her eyes shut but she made them stay open so she could look, felt the tip of one of the sticks brush her palm and snatched it. She was running out of air, and that was _bad,_ and she was almost scared enough to drop it but she held on tight, somehow making it back to air and safety.

Raven handed the stick to him. It was the green one. "One," she gasped. "Two more to go."

"That was perfect," he said, and the way he smiled at her made almost running out of air just a little bit okay. "Why don't you take a break before—"

But she dragged herself back under the water, feeling it close over her head as she reached for the other two sticks, because maybe if she was _extra _cooperative he would take some time off.

"Two and three." She held the blue and pink sticks up, one in each hand, looking from Coach Bruce to the bottom of the pool and having a lot of trouble believing that she'd actually gone all the way down there.

He looked a little surprised as he took the sticks from her and set them on the side of the pool, but it was a good kind of surprised. "Good job. You're going to do that again in a few minutes, okay?"

Her mouth went dry as she felt herself shaking her head, barely managing to stop once she realized that this probably didn't count as being cooperative. She'd just done it so she wouldn't have to do it again, and after all that, it didn't even matter… "But I already—"

"Raven." Coach Bruce lowered himself so he was at eye level with Raven, his voice gentle. "I know that some very bad things happened to you to make you afraid of being underwater. And that's not your fault. But the only way you can stop being afraid is to practice. Do you want to stop being afraid?"

Raven looked at a towel that somebody had dropped into the water. "I don't want to be scared anymore."

"Good," he said. "Then let's go to the steps and talk about breathing."

Somehow, Raven didn't think they would _just_ be talking, but the steps sounded better than the middle of the shallow end, so she followed him cautiously.

They did talk for a little while, about all the things that Raven wasn't doing right, and now she wasn't supposed to even hold her breath underwater anymore, she was supposed to breathe out, even though she didn't think that would be good because it meant she'd have less air in her lungs and less time to stay awake when she was under…Raven shivered and kicked the thoughts away. The rough concrete under her palms did make it easier than she'd expected when she actually tried it, lying on top of the water with her face inches above the surface.

Raven tried to pretend that the water wasn't there, that letting her head slip under the surface again and again was how she'd been breathing her whole life, and after awhile she sort of began to see what Coach Bruce meant by relaxing as she realized that her elbows had unclenched. He was sitting on the side of the pool with his feet in the water, just watching her and talking while she breathed in and out over and over, for a whole minute. It wasn't bad.

Then, she stopped thinking so hard about it and messed up, choking on bitter pool water and wrenching her head up, feeling a sob catching in her throat as she coughed and coughed. Coach Bruce put two big hands on her shoulders, guiding her over to sit on the side of the pool, saying her name over and over and telling her to look at him and to _breathe_ and that it was okay and she was fine.

"I'm fine," she repeated blankly, forcing air into her lungs, all the way into her stomach like her doctor had said.

"That's right," he said. "Are you going to swim next week?"

"With the coach who only has one eye?"

"He might be there," Coach Bruce agreed. "But I'll be there, too, and I'd like for you to swim."

Raven bit her lip, looking at her toes. "If he tries to _do _something to me, you won't let him, right?"

"I don't think anyone at the swim meet wants to do anything to you, Raven, least of all the other team's coach. But if we should have any problems, I'll be able to take care of it."

He was probably right, because she'd never seen him be _wrong _before, so Raven nodded uncertainly. "Can I think about it?"

"Don't worry, you can wait and tell me on Wednesday."

"I thought we had to tell you by today if we weren't swimming?"

"I'll make an exception," he said, stepping out into the shallow end. "Now, were you going to get those sticks for me again?"

* * *

Raven didn't think she was supposed to hear it.

It wasn't her fault—she'd just hung up the phone from calling her mom to ask her to come pick her up, promising that she'd cooperated and that, no, she didn't have to have her dessert taken away. And the brick column by the phone was a good place to lean against: she could read the bulletin board from here and try to figure out the words she didn't know. And it wasn't her fault that she had very good hearing (her other doctor—the kind that gave you shots—had said she'd done really well on her hearing test, even though it wasn't the kind of test you could make an 'A' on).

But Raven still didn't think she was supposed to hear what Coach Bruce said to Robin when he pulled him firmly behind one of the brick columns by the hand. One where maybe they didn't see her, but only because they weren't looking, since she saw them perfectly.

"You're not even letting me talk—I _don't _want to swim!"

"And you can choose a more appropriate time to have this conversation than when I'm working." Coach Bruce's voice was quiet, but not in the way he'd talked to Raven on the steps—more like the way he'd talked to Gar when he'd called Raven a baby. "I don't know what this is about, Robin, but if you have a problem you need to tell me with _words,_ not through misbehavior."

Robin's forehead wrinkled and he looked away. "The problem is that you're not listening to me and I'm _not _going to swim on Thursday and _you_ can't_ make_ me."

Coach Bruce turned Robin's face back to his with two fingers, then didn't let go of his chin as he gave him a look that made Raven want to hide, even when it wasn't meant for her. "Robin John Grayson, I am not tolerating this. Get yourself under control. Immediately."

Robin shuddered and closed his eyes. Probably because he didn't want to see that look and Bruce wasn't letting him move his head. "Yes, sir." The words didn't sound like Robin. They sounded like Terra the day she'd had to learn how to dive.

Releasing him, Coach Bruce sighed. "Robin, if this is—"

Robin mumbled something about homework, so quietly that Raven couldn't hear the exact words, and then he was walking back over to the table, not looking back. And the way he held his head somehow made Raven feel cold, even worse than when she thought about Coach Slade and his awful fake eye.


	11. Consequences

**Flip Turn**

**Chapter Eleven: Consequences

* * *

**

"So, wait, _Bruce Wayne_ is coaching _these _guys? Is this a joke?"

"I dunno, Grant, but they sure are…small."

Grant laughed. "We are talking about Bruce I-Have-So-Many-Golds-it-Shouldn't-Be-Legal Wayne, right? Because, I mean, yeah, I see him sitting over there, but somehow my brain just doesn't believe it. Man." He shook his head, eyes glittering with false sympathy. "He must've gotten hurt _bad, _to be bored enough and desperate enough to waste his time on those losers." Turning his attention to Robin, Grant stooped to look him in the eyes, continuing in a high-pitched voice that some people used when they talked to puppies. "Hey, shortie, what happened to your coach, huh? Shoulder? Back? Or are you so stupid that you don't even know?"

Robin didn't like the way he was talking, and something told him that there was probably no right answer to the questions, but he clenched his hands into fists and met the big boy's eyes evenly. "He didn't get hurt."

"Hey! I know who you are!" The eyes widened with surprise, recognition. "You're that little kid he took in a few years back. Funny, I always thought Wayne was smart. Never expected him to give up being a legend so he could wipe four-year-olds' noses."

And that's what he'd done, wasn't it—even though Robin was seven, now, and could definitely wipe his own nose, that wasn't important. Bruce should be training, should be doing what he actually _wanted_ to do, and instead he was wasting his time hoping that Robin would stop failing. But he'd never stop failing.

A long, black braid obscured Robin's view of Grant, Jade stepping in front of him with her hands on her hips. "You sure are ugly," she said.

Another harsh laugh. "Didn't your mommy tell you not to speak unless you're spoken to?"

Jade shook her head. "No, my mommy told me that all boys are mean and some of them are ugly. So I thought I'd let you know that you were one of the ugly ones."

Grant's blue eyes flashed with something dangerous, and Robin's heart beat faster as he tried to convince himself to help Jade—because he was pretty sure that even though she had a green belt, she wouldn't be able to protect herself from someone more than twice her size. Of course, Robin didn't exactly know what he was going to do about it, either, but he had to do _something _because he couldn't just let Grant hurt her. He opened his mouth to speak, but nothing came out, and he couldn't get a breath of air, and Grant was striding towards Jade, calling her something that Robin wasn't allowed to say and—

Except, Bruce was more than twice _Grant's_ size, and when he closed his hand around his forearm to pull it away from Jade, Robin felt his shoulders relax. "Is there a problem?" he asked, voice deep and serious as he dropped the arm.

Grant looked kind of like a leftover balloon that had been lying around a few days so it sagged a little. "No," he muttered quickly, not meeting Bruce's eyes.

"Good," said Bruce. "Then maybe you should find your way back to the rest of your team. And consider cleaning up your language." It wasn't a suggestion—if anyone else had said it, it would have been, but not from him. He gave the big boy another long look, then he was asking Jade if she was alright; Jade said that she was hungry and needed to go buy some food. He didn't say anything to Robin.

After glancing over to make sure Bruce wasn't looking, Grant casually shoved Robin as he walked by—it could have been an accident, but Robin didn't think it was. "See you later, mistake," he muttered, the words jumbled around a cough. Robin didn't know whose mistake he was supposed to be, but whatever it was, it made him feel like an elephant was sitting on his chest.

Robin didn't want it to be an away meet. He liked his pool, he was used to it now, and this one had huge, black starting blocks that had two steps instead of one, and even though he knew how to dive, he still didn't like being up that high when he had to go in headfirst. If he fell off, he'd break his arm. Or his neck. At least then, Bruce wouldn't be able to make him swim.

Probably.

After he tried to tell Bruce that he didn't want to swim this week, they'd had a _talk_. Several of them, actually, the most recent in the car on the way to the pool, when Bruce had told him that any sort of poor behavior tonight would be absolutely unacceptable. When he'd parked the car, he didn't let Robin get out right away, made him look in his eyes and say that he understood. Bruce made Robin look at him a lot, probably because Robin was really bad at lying, especially when people looked at his eyes. In the car, Robin hadn't even bothered trying to look away. It never did any good. He'd just promised. Twice.

And if he broke his promise, there would be "consequences." Lots of them. Robin never broke rules, so he didn't really know what that meant even though he knew the word. He didn't want to find out, either.

So he wasn't going to be bad, he _wasn't, _but it was hard to remember to be good when Bruce was talking to Raven with one hand on her shoulder, and the only time Bruce had touched Robin in the past week was to make him look at him, and that was _scary_ and he _hated _it.

Bruce wanted Raven to swim because she was probably really good except for being afraid to put her face in the water—and it had never been okay when _Robin _was afraid of something, so why could Raven get her way just because she cried?

Robin turned away from them and walked back to his seat, checking to make sure that Grant had actually gone back to the other team's side of the tennis court (it was really stupid to make them all sit on a tennis court, anyway; there wasn't enough space—_why_ was this an away meet?). He swallowed the lump in his throat so it slid back into his stomach where it belonged. He didn't want to swim, and the only thing that was making him was consequences.

If Bruce liked Raven better now, what was the point?

* * *

Coach Slade _did_ have a scary eye.

He hadn't really worried about it earlier this week, when the other kids had been talking, but Kitten and Roy had been right—and it was the wrong color and it never looked the right way, and sometimes the real eye would turn in a completely different direction from the fake one…he shuddered and looked down at his index card, well, _their_ card, really, since it was the freestyle relay, but Robin didn't trust anyone else to keep track of it. Especially not Gar, who'd probably make it sticky from the candy that he was eating.

"You're really not supposed to eat that, you know," he pointed out, indicating the bright green bag.

Gar shrugged. "Coach isn't the boss of me."

"Actually, he kinda is, at least as long as you're here," said Robin. Of course, Robin had to listen to Bruce _all _the time, whether he was swimming or not, even though Bruce never listened to _him._ Even though Bruce didn't even like him anymore.

"I'm sneaky; he won't find out." Gar giggled, offering Robin the bag. "You want some?"

"No, thanks," he said. Robin always followed the rules. He liked rules because then you knew what you had to do to be good, and as long as you did it you weren't in trouble.

A heavy, cold hand on his shoulder made Robin freeze. He turned slowly, not really wanting to see but making himself do it anyway, and found himself looking way, _way _up at Coach Slade.

"Ah, Robin," he said, his voice sounding friendly and yet at the same time not friendly at _all._ "I wonder if I might have a word?"

He didn't think most coaches would know the name of every swimmer on the other team. That thought made him feel kind of cold. "I—I have to swim in a minute, sir," Robin heard himself saying, jerking his hand in the direction of Wally and Billy and Gar, as if that would make the man believe him.

Nodding gravely, Coach Slade smiled, but it was all wrong, it was bad, it wasn't a real smile and it was somehow worse than a frown. "Of course. I promise not to exhaust an inordinate amount of your time, my boy."

Coach Slade was big, as big as Bruce, even, and Robin wasn't used to that. His hair was so blond it was almost white, though Robin didn't think that he looked old enough to have white hair. A metal whistle hung around his neck and—Robin shuddered—he had one blue eye and one gold, the gold one not quite looking real, except it seemed to stare through him in a way that the real one never could, and Robin couldn't stop thinking about what Kitten had said to Terra last Monday, "…It's way creepy. It might scare six-year-olds like you."

Robin was _seven, _and he shouldn't be scared, but he was. He bit his lip, nodded, and followed Coach Slade through the gate to the baby pool.

It wasn't that far away from the crowd, but a big umbrella kept them out of sight, and for some reason that made him nervous. For some reason, he wanted people to be able to see him. So they would know if…if…Robin focused on the little, plastic cover that had been stretched over the baby pool, pretending to be very interested in it until Coach Slade spoke.

"I trust you've found your first season of swimming to be rewarding?"

Robin shrugged. "It's been okay."

"And you have one more event remaining this evening, correct?" Slade's fake eye was looking right through him again.

"Umm, yeah, fr—free relay."

"Excellent," said Coach Slade. "Might I offer some advice, dear boy? I shouldn't wish for an innocent child such as yourself to have to experience any unnecessary…_unpleasantness."_

The word was ominous and hostile, like 'consequences,' only worse. Robin took a step away from Coach Slade, but it found him deeper in the shadow of the umbrella, and it had already gotten dark and the big man's eye almost seemed to glow and he couldn't stop looking at it even though staring was rude…

Coach Slade didn't wait too long for an answer, just continued without really giving Robin a chance to say whether or not he wanted the advice. "Such a pity, about your parents." He sighed and shook his head. "And you…tragic, really, to already have such disgrace on so young a head."

Icy fingers clutched around Robin's heart. He didn't talk about Mom and Dad, hadn't ever told any of the kids, even though Starfire had asked once and Terra wouldn't _stop_ asking. Had tried to shove it away until he couldn't remember the weekend when they'd gone skiing and he was staying with Bruce and Alfred (mostly Alfred…Bruce wasn't a very good babysitter back then), and they were supposed to be back on Monday, except on Saturday there had been a phone call and then nobody would tell Robin what happened for awhile, but Robin saw how hard Bruce was trying not to cry—and then he'd _known._

He swallowed the lump in his throat. "Disgrace, sir?" There was no disgrace, just a sudden storm and a broken neck and help that couldn't get there in time…

But the look in Coach Slade's real eye said otherwise. "Oh, of course, he wouldn't have told you." He sighed and shook his head, crouching down so he was level with Robin's face, voice so quiet that Robin was forced not to back away so he could still hear. "I was right to caution you, then. Robin, I have a vested interest in your reputation, and I fear that if you won tonight's race, the consequences might be quite serious indeed."

Robin narrowed his eyes, trying to understand. "Why would it be bad if my team won?"

"Oh, by all means, Robin, please, do win! After all, I should have foreseen that so dedicated and formidable an athlete as yourself would consider victory paramount. Any other details could only be considered extraneous."

It was hard to understand what he'd said because of all the big words—Bruce used big words all the time, but he usually explained what they meant. "What _kind _of details, sir?" He took a step away and stumbled, grabbing the plastic table so he wouldn't fall.

Coach Slade straightened up, waving a hand as he started towards the gate. "Details that I'm certain your guardian would find most inappropriate for me to disclose to you." He paused, turning around to fix the eye on Robin, and behind that little ball of glass there was an empty _hole,_ just like a skeleton, and Robin tightened his grip on the table. "Perhaps when you're older," the man chided.

"But—"

"You mustn't ask so many questions, Robin, or you'll miss your race. And speaking of the race, do attempt to remember my advice. We wouldn't want any ghosts of the past turning up to plague the memories of John and Mary, now would we?"

And then he was gone, the gate clanging shut behind him, and Robin's hands wouldn't stop shaking, not even when Gar started rattling on the fence from outside in the grass, yelling that he had to come back right now or they were going to miss the race. Robin stumbled through the gate and found his way back to the other boys. For some reason, it took him a minute to remember why he was supposed to be swimming a race, and a minute after that to remember that it was freestyle. At least, he was pretty sure it was freestyle. Robin's stomach hurt.

* * *

"What'd the weirdo say to you?"

"Nothing."

"You look like it was something."

"It's not_ important_, Wally, just leave me alone!"

Wally frowned, forehead wrinkling. "You okay? Want me to go tell coach that you can't swim?"

His heart beat faster and he shook his head quickly. "No, _don't_. I'm _going _to swim." Bruce wouldn't let him scratch, anyway, not for something stupid like a stomachache—but of course, maybe he didn't really care one way or the other, because _Raven_ had already finished her race and he liked her better now… Robin had to swim. He had to prove he was still good for something.

"Okaaay," Wally said doubtfully as they stood up together. "Umm, Robin?"

_"What,_ Wally?" he snapped.

"You're supposed to, umm, be going that way." He pointed to the other end of the pool. "Me an' Billy start from this end. …Remember?"

Robin glared at him and hurried to catch up with Gar on the other side. It had only taken two seconds and he'd already screwed up.

He barely made it to their lane, and the timer gave him an exasperated look as she motioned for him to stand behind Gar—even though Robin knew he was going last, obviously. Trying to make himself breathe, he half-listened to the starter announce that this was event number seventy-two, which Robin already knew because he'd seen Bruce's heat sheets so many times he had them memorized. His gaze unwillingly fell on Coach Slade, who had a little girl on his lap. She had a round face and the same almost-white hair as Coach Slade. She looked really like him, except she had two blue eyes, and Slade only had one, and the fake eye was just staring at him, _watching _him…

Somebody poked him, and Robin jumped, fully expecting to find Slade looking down at him, except it was just Gar, who was waving a hand in his face. "Hellooo? Earth to Robin? I'm about to swim now—are you gonna be able to remember to go when it's your turn?"

Feeling his face burn, Robin nodded curtly, looking to their lane and realizing that he hadn't even heard the signal to start, that Wally was already almost finished with his lap—he was always first; Bruce said that he did it that way because the signal made Robin nervous, even though that _wasn't _true. And then as Wally touched the wall, ahead of everyone else in the heat, Gar did something that was somehow a dive, a jump and falling in the water all at once, and disappeared under the surface.

Even though Gar wasn't very fast, he got to the other end much too quickly, because Robin wanted to slow down time so he'd never have to swim, or at least so he'd be able to wait until he was ready, and he wasn't ready now with that dead eye still staring at him. But Billy was diving into the water no matter how much Robin didn't want him to, his kick haphazard and over-zealous, churning up the water in a way that made Robin want to make him do it _right_. Except, it didn't matter. Robin could have the best freestyle kick in the universe, and Bruce would still like Raven better.

Maybe it didn't even matter how good he was. Maybe Bruce just…liked Raven better.

Robin didn't have time to think about it anymore, though, because Billy was at the wall, and he didn't want them to think he hadn't been paying attention, and he was pretty sure his hand had touched, so he dove, even though what he really wanted to do was throw up.

The water was hot, way too hot, and the boy in the lane next to him had a five yard lead, but Robin caught up quickly because he just wanted out of the water, just wanted to get away from consequences and unpleasantness and glowing, gold eyes. Robin was never happy when he raced. Sometimes he liked practice, but swim meets made him sick, and he thought about it too much and couldn't keep his mind in the pool where he needed to keep it—and if he didn't get to that wall first, Bruce was going to be so mad at him; well, he was already mad but it would be _worse_, and the water felt thick and syrupy as he dragged his hands through it again and again.

Robin did get to the wall first, just in front of the boy who'd been in front of him at the beginning of the lap. He pulled off his goggles and started to climb out of the pool, but a gentle tap on his shoulder stopped him and he turned to face the boy who'd come in second, who smiled and offered his hand. Robin reached awkwardly across the water and shook it, hesitant because he didn't really like touching people, especially people he didn't know, and he was glad when the boy released him and he could get out of the water.

"That's Joey," said a girl with curly black hair and a British accent, her shoulders dripping wet—she must have been on the other team's relay. "He used to be able to talk but he can't anymore, so now he talks with his hands."

Robin knew some sign language but didn't want to talk to Joey at all, didn't want to talk to _anyone,_ so he offered a tense nod and looked away.

But he had to talk to the man in the white polo shirt with a headset in his ear who stopped him and Gar before they could leave the blocks and said, "Boys, you did a really good job."

Robin's mouth was already dry. Getting stopped by a Stroke and Turn judge never meant that you did a really good job, and you'd be an idiot to believe them—it meant that you were disqualified because you'd done something wrong, and at that moment, all he wanted to do was fall through the pool deck.

"…When you're swimming a relay, next time try to make sure that you wait until the person in front of you touches the wall, okay?"

Gar shrugged. Robin nodded because there wasn't anything to say that would excuse him—and anyway, he was pretty sure that he wouldn't have been able to say something if he tried, since the judge's eyes were squarely on him, not even flickering towards any of the others.

And it was his fault, it was all his fault because he knew what a false start, was, he _knew,_ and he should have made sure that Billy's hand had really touched the wall, but he _hadn't,_ he'd _failed, _and now everybody was going to be mad at him and—

Behind the judge, Robin saw Slade watching him evenly, the eye slicing him open where it could see every awful disappointment that Robin wanted to hide away forever. Slade smiled a thin, satisfied smile. But as terrifying as that was, he couldn't think about it anymore when Bruce pointed sharply at Robin and then the ground in front of him, finger stiff and rigid, and then Robin _really _wanted to throw up.

* * *

"What did I say to you?"

He'd had to wait until the big kids had finished their relays before Bruce would talk to him. Robin had stood behind him with the sickening knowledge that he was in trouble, knowing that every finished race brought him closer to the actual trouble. After the last event, Bruce had calmly gotten up and started over to a depopulated corner of the pool, the look he gave Robin telling him that if he didn't follow, everything would be a lot worse.

Robin studied a crack in the cement. "You said—"

Hands on his face. Bruce sharply pulling a plastic chair over so he could meet Robin's eyes. "Robin John Grayson, look at me when I'm talking to you."

He cringed, and made himself look, biting his lip because he didn't trust himself to speak.

"What did I say to you about how you were to behave tonight?"

"Y—you said that I was s'posed to be good. And swim. And help the team," Robin whispered.

"And did you do those things?"

He knitted his fingers together fitfully. "I…I tr—tried."

"I don't exactly file cheating under trying to help the team, Robin." Bruce's eyes were dark and angry, angrier than he'd ever seen him look at Robin, so angry that it didn't even matter that he thought Robin had cheated, because there was nothing he could do to make it better—nothing.

The backs of his eyes stung, and he was cold, and all he wanted to do was find a place to hide where he wouldn't have to see how much Bruce hated him. "I—I'm sorry—I didn't—I just—" He hiccupped and couldn't say anything else.

"Robin, I know you heard me when I said that disagreements between us were not to affect the team. What you did tonight hurt not only yourself, but three other people, to whom you are going to apologize before you leave this pool. You have _got _to learn that you can't behave poorly just because you have a problem which you refuse to verbalize. That's selfishness, and I will not tolerate it. Are you listening to me, Robin?"

He was listening. He was listening as he felt the tears that threatened to prove that he was selfish _and_ weak, and Robin wasn't going to cry here, he _wasn't_—but if he didn't want to do that, he'd have to get away fast.

So he said the only thing on his mind, the thing he'd wanted to say since Friday when Bruce had hugged Raven, the thing that he wished desperately were true, because then it wouldn't hurt so much that Bruce didn't love him. "I hate you, you know that? I _hate _you—I _hate you!"_

Wrenching himself away from Bruce's hands, suddenly loose enough that he was able to get out of them, he clenched his fists tightly at his sides, a lump in his throat the size of a watermelon. And he ran. He _ran, _and he didn't even care that you weren't allowed to run on the pool deck, because he was already in enough trouble for the entire Titans swim team so one extra bit wouldn't make that much difference. Robin didn't stop till he'd flung open the door of the boys' bathroom, stumbled into the third shower and collapsed onto the tiles.

It was cold and he didn't have any idea where his towel was, but he was too tired to turn on the water—that would mean he'd have to get up—so he just dropped his head into his knees and cried for a long time. He couldn't remember crying this much since Alfred had made him sit on the couch, arm around his shoulders, and told him why Mom and Dad were never coming back.

Except, this time, Robin just wanted to know why Bruce didn't love him anymore, and nobody was going to tell him.


	12. Dessert

**Flip Turn**

**Chapter Twelve: Dessert

* * *

**

Five seconds didn't seem like a very long time when Vic counted it out inside his head—it took him longer than that to take a drink from the water fountain. But in the pool, it was forever. He'd taken two seconds off his IM time, but he had to take off five more, and Vic didn't think there was any way to swim it faster. And there was only one more meet after this one. And then Divisionals. And if he hadn't taken off five seconds by then…he was _going _to take off five seconds by then.

Vic repeated the counting silently, over and over as he walked towards the locker room. One, two, three, four, five. It wasn't that hard. He tried to picture himself in the water, swimming just _that_ much faster. It wasn't even under two minutes, and he'd been able to break two minutes when he was _seven_, so why couldn't he—

He shook his head. It didn't work that way. Five seconds.

"Vic!" Somebody poked him between the shoulder blades. "Hey, Vic, I _know_ you can hear me!"

He turned around to see Wally tossing an apple from one hand to the other, grinning up at him. Vic felt himself smile slightly, reaching out to grab the apple in mid-throw. "Yeah, I heard ya. How was your relay?"

Wally immediately stopped trying to snatch the apple back, sighing. "No good. We got DQ'd. But that's not—"

"Wait a sec, how do you get disqualified on the _free _relay?" You could swim anything you wanted for freestyle, practically, even one of the other strokes, as long as you didn't touch the bottom or the lane rope, so you'd have to be trying to get disqualified.

"Robin false started, but—"

Vic's mouth dropped open. _"Robin_ false started?" he echoed.

"_Yeah,_ but that's not the problem!" he said impatiently. "I don't care about getting stupid ribbons—I already have too many, and anyways, it doesn't even matter who wins 'cos it doesn't count till Divisionals. Well, okay, Gar's really mad, but only because he had to swim and do all that work for nothing."

The dual meets weren't scored; nothing counted until Divisionals, which was probably a good thing because Coach Slade's team could have eaten them alive. "So what _is _the problem, then?" Vic asked slowly, following Wally towards the locker room. He wasn't sure if he wanted to find out what Wally would consider a problem.

Wally's eyes narrowed. "Robin's acting all weird. He always acts weird, but this is even worse."

He pushed open the heavy door, holding it for Wally. "Weird in what way?"

"Well, I think that—"

But he never finished saying what he thought, because as soon as they were through the door, they both stopped talking and Vic had to try really hard to keep his breathing even. A big guy from the other team—he was wearing their orange and black uniform, so Vic knew he wasn't from the Titans—had one palm on either side of a shower stall, making a little cage out of his arms. And in between them, Robin was just standing there, blue eyes puffy and wide and terrified, not trying to run away but looking like he really, really wanted to.

"C'mon, shortie, you can tell me. Just tell nice ol' Grant what's the matter. I just wanna make it all better." Grant's hair was plastered to his forehead, trails of water running down into his ears, and he had a smile on his face that told Vic that he probably wouldn't make anything better.

Robin shook his head, biting his lip and not saying anything.

Grant shifted his weight so he could drop a heavy hand on Robin's shoulder. "Not gonna talk to me, short stuff? We can't have that. I don't like it when people don't talk to me." His fingers tensed dangerously, and there was something in his eyes that Vic didn't like, and then he knew that he had to say something quick.

"Hi, are you using that shower?" he asked calmly, trying to pretend that he really just wanted to know the answer to the question.

The blond head swung around, turning the glare on Vic and Wally. "Actually, I am, and I don't really appreciate being interrupted by runts. Got a problem?"

Vic shook his head. "No, I just wanted to talk to Robin. Privately. But since you're here and you don't want us to interrupt, I guess we'll just go somewhere else to talk." He motioned for Robin to come with him, and Robin looked helplessly from Vic to the hand on his shoulder.

"I don't take orders from—"

Wally interrupted him with a careless laugh. "You can't do _anything_ to us, or we'll go get our coach, and he'll kick your butt, and _then_ he'll kick your coach's butt, 'cos he's Bruce Wayne and stuff."

As soon as he'd started speaking, Vic had worried, because he could tell that Grant had a really short temper and you couldn't reason with those kinds of people—you just had to get away from them or try and make sure they couldn't hurt you. But by some miracle, the words had some effect—or at least the name did, because right when Wally said 'Bruce Wayne', Grant seemed to shrink at least a few inches and he let go of Robin's shoulder as if it were suddenly on fire. He stepped away from him, brushing right through Vic and Wally by shoving them to either side, pretending he'd just wanted to go look in the mirror. Vic edged away while Grant checked his hair, wishing that Wally would do the same but he didn't look scared at all.

After he'd taken long enough to be able to pretend that he really did just want to leave, Grant gave them one last dirty look. "Pathetic babies," he scathed. "You're not even worth me beating you up. Look me up when you're more than six inches tall."

Vic _was_ pretty tall, actually, almost as tall as Grant—who had to be at least twelve, maybe thirteen or fourteen— but he didn't think that pointing that out would be the best idea.

"Gonna go check out that hot girl on your team with the long, black hair—see if she's less of a loser than all of you." His voice echoed after him as he left, and Vic thought that if Komand'r would like anybody, she'd like this guy. They could steal Starfire's toys together.

None of them moved for a few seconds after he left, with Vic not entirely sure that he wouldn't come back, and Robin looking like he wanted to crawl back into the shower stall, close the curtain and stay there forever. Wally was the one who finally did something. Closing the distance between them, he shrugged off his towel and threw it around Robin's shoulders.

"You're cold," he stated, as if answering Robin's incredulous look.

"No I'm not," he said.

Wally rolled his eyes. "Yeah, that's why you're shaking and you're turning all purple. If I were you, I'd have been smart enough to at least turn on the hot water if I was gonna hide in the shower."

"I _wasn't _hiding, and anyway, if I was, turning on the water would make noise, which would totally defeat the purpose of—"

Something about hearing Robin say "defeat the purpose" made Vic smile. Then he stopped smiling, because he noticed that Robin's eyes looked worse than he'd thought, his whole face, really—like he'd been crying. Hard.

But it wouldn't be good to say that, because if whatever happened had been enough to make Robin cry, he probably didn't want anybody to point that out. So Vic just said, "What'd that jerk say to you?"

Robin shrugged. "He didn't do anything."

"I didn't ask what he did; I asked what he _said,"_ Vic pointed out gently.

Another shrug, Robin's gaze falling to the gray tiles. "Nothing. He was just bothering me, but now he's gone—so thanks for making him stop."

"No problem," said Vic. He hesitated, and then added, "Do you—d'you want us to go get coach?"

Robin's eyes snapped up, caught somewhere between sad and scared. "_No_. No, it's _fine,_ I'm okay, let's just get out of here."

"Okay," said Vic.

"Yeah, let's _go!_ I'm starving, and they might give us candy for free if they have extra." Wally grabbed Vic by one arm and Robin by the other, leading them towards the door and grinning.

"I don't really think you need any more candy, somehow," Vic said, shaking his head.

"You can never have enough candy!" Sobering, Wally seemed to realize something and stopped walking, bringing Vic to a halt as he yanked his arm back. "Robin, just so ya know, none of us mind, okay? It doesn't matter."

Robin pulled himself out of Wally's grip. "Yes it does. It matters more than you could possibly get." His voice wavered a little.

"Then maybe I'm stupid for not getting why it matters, but if I am, I kinda like being stupid, and it _still _doesn't matter," Wally said brightly. "Now are you gonna come with us or not?"

Robin took a breath, slightly deeper than his breathing had been before, and nodded hesitantly. "I guess, but I'm not eating candy. I don't even like it."

Wally paled. "Okay, that's just _wrong!"_

Vic kind of agreed with him, but there was no way to tell if Robin was lying about it, because he didn't eat it, wouldn't even touch it. There was something disturbing about that. Even Komand'r didn't turn down candy.

"Hey, are you guys allowed to go get ice cream with us?" Gar appeared behind them, swinging on the lifeguard stand, excited and breathless and balancing an armful of gum in the crook of his elbow.

Vic looked doubtfully at the stuff in his arms. "You have all that, and now you want _ice cream?"_

Gar nodded resolutely. "I've been wanting Dairy Queen ever since I found out about DQ—and yeah, I know it's not really that, but it still makes me think of ice cream, and so I bugged my mom for awhile, and she says we can…so are you allowed?"

"I dunno; I'll have to ask," said Vic. It was kind of late, and he didn't really feel like ice cream when Robin still looked like he was going to cry.

"I'm allowed. I'm _always _allowed." Wally, of course. "Vic, can I ride with you?"

"If it's okay, sure," he said cautiously. "You want to go, Robin?" He asked it casually, but it was really important that he say yes, because then they could try to get that frightened, hopeless look out of his eyes—and if he didn't want ice cream, Starfire would probably make him eat it anyway, and maybe that would help. Somehow. If anything could help.

Robin glanced over his shoulder and shuddered, the movement barely discernible, and he quickly shook himself back to normal...but Vic saw it. He also saw who Robin was looking at. Coach Bruce didn't look _mad,_ exactly, but whatever it was, Vic had definitely never seen it on his face before.

"I'm tired," Robin said softly, passing Wally's towel back to him with a muttered thanks. "See you guys at practice tomorrow." The words were hollow—Robin couldn't care less if he saw them at practice or not, and Vic was pretty sure that the way he shrank away from Coach Bruce when the man tried to lay a hand on his shoulder had something to do with it.

He was also starting to wonder if Grant hadn't been the whole reason that Robin was crying in the locker room. If maybe he hadn't been the reason at _all._

Coach Bruce said something to Robin, too soft for Vic to hear, but Robin didn't answer, just reached up to take his gym bag from him, zipping it open and throwing on a blue t-shirt. Then, he swung the bag over his shoulder and started silently towards the parking lot.

Vic didn't want ice cream at all anymore.

* * *

_My sister pulled the "C" key off my keyboard (don't ask how I'm writing this right now) so I'm not sure when I'll really be able to sit down and write again, but I do hope to get it fixed very soon as I can't live without my laptop. Thanks a ton to everybody who's given feedback on this--I'm really thrilled! Next chapter will be underway as soon as this keyboard nonsense gets straightened out. --Azelma_


	13. People You Look At

**Flip Turn**

**Chapter Thirteen: People You Look At**

* * *

This meet was a lot better than the last one—it was at Starfire's pool, so she could look for butterflies when she wasn't supposed to be doing something else, and plus, the starting blocks were white. Last week, they'd been black. She hadn't liked that.

The other team's coach hadn't been very nice, either. When Kitten told her about Coach Slade, she'd kind of thought that he was only pretending to be mean and that maybe he just needed some friends. But Coach Slade wasn't pretending. At all. His real eye had glared at her when she glanced over at him for just a second before she jumped off the blocks, and it made her feel like he _knew_ things, things that weren't very nice, even though she couldn't think of anything bad enough for him to actually know. It had almost made her start the race too early so she wouldn't have to keep looking at him, but she had managed to stay still with her hands clutching the ugly, black starting block, at least until she'd heard the _beep. _

But tonight wouldn't be like that. Because Coach Slade wasn't here, and he wasn't allowed to be here, and he could go and be mean somewhere else.

It wouldn't be like that, but Komand'r _was _allowed to be here, and she'd definitely taken Starfire's goggles.

_"Koma! _Give it!"

Komand'r leaned forward with her hands behind her back, holding the goggles firmly away as Starfire tried to reach behind her. "Give what? I didn't take anything. Maybe you just lost them. 'Cos you're stupid."

"I am _not _stupid; _you _are mean!"

"Still too stupid to figure out contractions, though," she sighed, as if she was very sorry that Starfire couldn't figure them out—except she wasn't. Komand'r straightened up, taking the goggles with her. "Nah, think I'm gonna keep these safe for awhile. I don't want stupid babies to mess them up."

"But th—they are—_they're_ mine, and I won't mess them up!" Starfire hiccupped, wishing she could get the talking right, because she made it even worse when she was mad, and she could feel the invisible elephant sitting on her chest like it always did when Komand'r was mean. There had been elephants before the summer, across the ocean, but this wasn't the good kind.

Komand'r stared down at her with an awful kind of grin. "I think somebody's just mad that I'm the better swimmer and I _always _will be. I'm the best everything, _Koriand'r." _She lowered her voice to a whisper, black eyes narrow and excited. "And there's _nothing_ you can do about it. Because that's all you are: you're not a winner, just a _nothing. _Just plain, old Kori."

That wasn't why she was mad because Starfire never worried about being the best swimmer, at least she didn't except when her sister said it in that mean voice and wouldn't give her goggles back, dangling them over her head just too high. Everything _changed_ when Komand'r was around, like that time last week when she'd shoved her into the wall because Starfire said that she wouldn't pretend to be her cat. Or like that time across the ocean, when she'd told Starfire that if she could find an oasis, she'd get a wish, and Starfire had walked all over the place in the sun, just looking, until it had gotten too hot, and she'd fallen down in the sand and went to sleep for a long time.

Things changed because Komand'r made them change. Starfire just…let her change them. And the elephant was making it too hard to breathe, and was she _really _just a _nothing? _

She was starting to wonder if she'd ever be able to fill up her lungs again when a quick hand snatched the goggles away from Komand'r. A hand that wasn't Starfire's.

She spun around to look, and saw that the hand belonged to an arm that was attached to an older girl that she'd never seen before. She looked a lot like Terra, except a _ton_ bigger, and her skin was slightly darker, like she spent a lot of time outside. Her blonde hair was a lot shorter, too, pulled away from her face with a black headband. The bright blue suit (which she wore under a pair of red shorts) meant that she was on the other team, though that was pretty obvious anyway, since Starfire knew everyone on her own team, and she didn't know this girl.

"I think these are yours," said the girl, handing the goggles to Starfire.

"I think you're a moron with a stupid uniform," Komand'r sneered, completely ignoring Starfire now, focusing on the girl with her eyes full of fire—the bad kind of fire.

The girl blinked but didn't move. "I think you shouldn't be mean to eight and unders." She looked away from Komand'r, but not because she was afraid—her casual expression meant that she just didn't feel like talking to her. "I'm Kara," she said, addressing Starfire. "Did you say your name was Kori—Kori—something with 'Kori,' anyway."

"No, it is Starfire. I used to be Koriand'r, but that was before I moved across the big ocean." Starfire laughed, edging away from Komand'r, who looked like she wanted to shove Kara against the fence and give her a bloody nose—except, from the way Kara's arms looked, that probably wouldn't be such a good idea.

Except, she was maybe going to try it anyway. "Hey, blondie! You can't just take something from me and expect me to let you! We don't like people from the other team over here, anyway." She grinned wickedly. "Sometimes, they don't come out alive."

"Nice to meet you, Starfire—which ocean?"

Maybe Kara couldn't hear people very well. Or maybe she just couldn't hear Komand'r—because it wasn't possible to just ignore Komand'r. Starfire glanced over at her sister in disbelief before answering awkwardly, "Umm, I am not sure, but it is a big one between here and Africa, and we flew over it on a plane, and it took all day, and Komand'r kept kicking the back of my seat if I wouldn't give her my peanuts."

"That must have been frustrating," said Kara, still not looking back at Komand'r.

Komand'r reached out to shove Kara in the shoulder. "Hey—I _asked _you to do something: either start telling me what fashion disaster convinced you to wear something that clashes so horribly or go away and let me deal with my baby sister however I want to."

Looking down at the hand on her bathing suit strap, almost as if she was trying to make sure it was really there, Kara slowly looked back at Komand'r, light eyebrows arching up her forehead. "No," she stated, shrugging away from her. "I don't think I have time. 'Cos if your name's Komand'r, they're yelling it really loud over there." She pointed towards a man with a wad of blue index cards, who was indeed yelling Komand'r's name through a giant, white cone that made his voice a lot bigger. He was Gar's dad, and he didn't look happy when his eyes fell on the girl he was yelling for.

Komand'r turned and dropped to her knees, digging frantically through her bag to find her own goggles, finally snapping up, holding them delicately between two fingers. "I don't even have time for this. I'll be back to deal with you later, sister dear. But you can watch me get my name in the paper if you want."

Starfire wrinkled her nose at her sister's back. "She's lying—she's really bad at breaststroke, and she's not gonna win." Well, they were _both _kind of bad at breaststroke, but Kara didn't need to know that.

Kara sighed. "Speaking of that, my coach won't like it if I miss my event, so I have to go."

"My coach wouldn't like it, either," said Starfire. "At all. Because one time, Roy missed an event to see what would happen, and Coach Bruce made him do ten pushups in front of _everybody." _She made a face.

"Oh, mine wouldn't be _mad,"_ said Kara, twirling her goggles around her index finger. "He never gets mad. But I've been swimming for four years and I'm s'posed to know better." She fixed Starfire with a mischievous smile. "I usually know better. But sometimes I pretend that I forgot."

"You should go swim, though, or you'll be in trouble." Starfire didn't want Kara to get in trouble, and even though she didn't seem to think that she would, you _always _got in trouble for missing events. You just _did._

"Guess so." She waved with the hand that was twirling her goggles, sending them flying off her finger, but she caught them before they got very far—and her hand moved so fast it was almost hard to see. That was probably how she'd been able to stop Komand'r from being mean. "See you later, and don't let your sister take your stuff. Tell your coach if she does."

"I will, and don't listen to what Koma said about the other team not being allowed to come over here—she was lying about that, too!"

"I know," said Kara, walking backwards to the benches and Gar's dad with the index cards, and not even tripping over anything. "Bye, Starfire!"

Starfire watched her the whole time the girl was sitting on the benches, in the middle of her row, far away from Komand'r, who wasn't even on the same bench as she was. She didn't know why she couldn't stop watching, but figured that Kara was one of those people that everybody else just stopped what they were doing to _look _at. Kind of like the other team's coach, actually. Starfire had only seen him a little bit at warm-up but something about the way his face looked was the _same,_ even though he didn't look anything like Kara. It made her feel like everything would be alright. She wasn't sure why, but it did.

Before she'd even thought about it, Starfire was running across the grass to slip through the fence and watch Kara's race.

* * *

Coach Bruce did _not _look happy. Neither did Coach Clark.

"Please, please—just this once and we'll never ask again, we swear!" Gar was jumping up and down, eyes bright and earnest, his goggles resting crooked on his forehead.

"If you do it, I'll…" Roy paused, eyes scrunched up as he tried to think of something that would be a good trade. "I'll swim fifty laps of butterfly—no, sixty—no, for a _whole practice_ without even stopping!"

Offering to do things sounded like a fun game, so Starfire took a deep breath and announced, "And I will do _eight hundred_ pushups. In front of everybody!" She paused for a moment. "Psst," she whispered, poking Terra in the shoulder. "What do we want him to do?" She'd just finished swimming butterfly and hadn't heard whatever they were talking about. It seemed like everyone was here, or at least all the kids her age—except for Robin, who'd been acting really strange ever since the meet with Coach Slade, and Starfire was pretty sure that he'd gotten in a lot of trouble. He didn't talk to Coach Bruce much now, except to say "Yes, sir" or "No, sir." He mostly didn't even look at him.

Terra spun to face her, blue lips stretched up in a grin. "We want the coaches to race!"

She felt her mouth drop open. _"Can_ they?" Swim team had so many rules that it seemed like there would be one against this.

"Sure they can," said Roy. "It just doesn't count. Not like it counted anyway, but this _really _doesn't count. You're allowed to swim in any heat as long as there's enough lanes, and it's called an ex—an exuh—"

_"Exhibition,_ and it's also known as I'm-not-doing-it," Coach Bruce said gently.

Gar leaned his elbows against the back of Coach Bruce's chair. "But please, can you maybe just do it a little bit?"

He sighed. "You either race or you don't race, Gar, and I'm not going to race."

Starfire felt a grin creeping up her face to match Terra's, because she could tell from his face that he really did want to, and just wanted them to convince him. "But we have never seen you _really_ swim—only in practice—and you see _us_ swim all the time, so it is really not fair." It was hard to remember about talking right when you were excited.

"Starfire, Coach Clark has yet to agree to this, and I'm reasonably sure that he's not going to." His glare at the other coach as he said the last three words had a hint of warning in it, which probably meant he was daring him to race to try to get him to. But what he was _saying_ meant that he'd already agreed himself. He just didn't know it yet.

Everybody turned expectantly to Coach Clark, including several kids in blue suits from the other team. He shifted in his seat, like he wasn't really sure what to say and didn't want to disappoint anyone. So Starfire decided that she would make sure that he knew what to say. "Will you, please?" she asked, taking a deep breath and crossing her fingers.

He looked a little bit like somebody had dragged him to the dentist as he glanced past Starfire to the kids on his team, as if they'd explain everything. "Guys, you know that I don't—"

"C'mon, coach." A smaller hand fell on his shoulder, Kara grinning at him. "It's just for fun."

Coach Clark sighed heavily, closing his eyes, and then opened them to raise an eyebrow at Coach Bruce. "I think I'm going to regret this," he stated, except Starfire thought that it might have been a little bit like a lie.

She giggled. They had him now.

Spinning back around to face Coach Bruce, who had a really funny expression on his face, like he'd bit into a lemon, Starfire pointed to make sure he'd seen what had just happened. "He said he would do it, he _said,_ now will you, _please?"_

Coach Bruce groaned, but then smirked at Roy. "How many laps of butterfly were you offering, again?"

"Umm…I don't remember?"

* * *

Starfire still didn't know everything about swimming yet, but she _did _know that there were definitely supposed to be four people on a relay team.

She tapped Karen on the knee. "They both need three more swimmers." Somebody really should tell them that, and Starfire could do it if no one else would—

Karen shook her head, ponytail shaking with her. "It's exhibition. They can do whatever they want. It's not going to matter anyway, 'cos they're too old to place or anything." She squinted at the starting blocks. "So I guess they're just gonna swim the whole thing. So it would be…eight laps. That's a long way."

They'd only done eight laps at a time once, and Starfire had taken a break after number six. It was a _really_ long way. "But is this not against the rules?"

"Nope." Karen shrugged. "It's the last meet of the season, anyway, and nobody cares because the big kids always mess up the free relay. It's practically a law. One time, this one girl went off the blocks with a box of crackers on her head. Luckily, it was empty."

"Crackers?" Terra squeaked. "Like, crumbs in her _hair?" _

"Hey, I said it was empty," said Karen. "And this other time, they swam it backwards, and once they swam the whole thing underwater—the people who did that got DQ'd for not surfacing before fifteen meters." She giggled. "I wish I was fifteen so I could act stupid."

Starfire didn't really think that the coaches were acting stupid, though. Well, Coach Bruce looked completely serious, like he was doing a job, and not even a fun one. Coach Clark looked like he'd really rather keep talking to the little boy sitting in the plastic chair behind him, and he didn't seem to even notice that the big kids in the other lanes were gaping at him. He was the last one to step up, and he sort of jumped, skipping the tiny stair like it didn't even exist. He said something to Coach Bruce that Starfire couldn't hear, but didn't get an answer.

The starter looked kind of irritated and kind of excited, and Starfire figured he was expecting somebody to do something stupid, since Karen had said that's what always happened.

"Can I false start?" called one of the big kids on the other team.

Coach Clark smiled, shook his head, and went back to watching the starter. It was a nice smile, though, the same one from warm-up and the same one on Kara's face when she'd gotten Starfire's goggles back. Thinking about that made her wonder where Kara had gone, and she finally found her near one of the poles that held the flags up, a red towel around her shoulders, her headband having found its way back to her forehead

Starfire almost missed the start, but she didn't quite miss it, and it made her mouth fall open. She'd seen good divers before: Kitten and Robin and Wally. But this was completely different. She remembered when she'd first learned how, and she'd told Robin that he'd been flying, because that's what it had looked like to her, but now…now she really didn't see any difference, and if this wasn't flying, it was good enough, anyhow, and Starfire figured that even the birds had to be jealous.

The pool somehow looked shorter because the coaches were swimming—_really _swimming, not like when Coach Bruce would tell them all to watch when he showed them something. It was shorter and a little scary. They flipped at the wall, kicking it like they were angry at it for doing something wrong. Starfire definitely didn't want to race either one of them, though she kind of thought that she'd rather race Coach Clark if she had to pick.

Because he definitely wasn't going to win.

It wasn't because eight laps was too long: eight laps was clearly not too long for either of them, and Starfire didn't think that even eighty _million_ would be too long, but he just didn't quite _care _like Coach Bruce did. Maybe he really couldn't beat him, or maybe he just focused too much on what was going on in the other lanes to really go fast enough, but he couldn't win this race. Maybe that was why Coach Bruce was on television, and he wasn't. Maybe you had to _care_ to be on television, to care exactly like that, where nothing else existed except the final wall.

Starfire didn't know if that was exactly right, but she did know that Coach Bruce touched the wall four seconds faster—she'd counted—and that Gar was screaming in her ear…and it kind of hurt.

"I told ya, I told ya he would win, didn't I? _Nobody _can beat our coach—not even that one-eyed creep from last week!" He crawled over to poke Kara on the top of her foot, probably because she was the closest swimmer on the other team. _"We won,"_ he pronounced.

Kara smiled and shrugged. "He won't race." Raising her voice, she yelled at the starting blocks, "G'job, coach!"

Coach Clark reached over to shake Coach Bruce's hand. Starfire didn't do that after racing, but maybe she wasn't old enough for it to matter yet. The blond boy who'd been sitting in the chair tried to jump on Coach Clark even before he'd gotten out of the pool all the way. This didn't seem to work very well, and then Starfire realized what he'd _really_ been trying to do—realized it when Coach Clark fell back into the pool with a huge splash, the boy giggling above him and pointing.

Starting to get an idea that was probably going to get her in a lot of trouble, and not sure that she cared at all, Starfire narrowed her eyes and looked around at the other kids. It seemed like she wasn't the only one who'd thought of it. Gar and Terra and Jade met her gaze solemnly, with Kitten jerking her thumb over at Coach Bruce and nodding.

"Anyone thinking what I'm thinking?" Kitten asked the circle, straightening her hair.

Jade rose to her feet, pulling Terra with her. _"Way_ ahead of you." And they followed her to the starting blocks, stepping around the people who were already stacking chairs and putting away stopwatches.

Starfire wasn't sure if he suspected it or not. It was hard to tell with Coach Bruce. She hoped her grin was as innocent as she'd tried to make it, even though she really didn't think they could fool him. And really didn't care. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Kara dragging the empty lane rope spool with one hand, wrench in the other, just staring at them with something like approval.

"You're not wet enough yet, coach," said Jade.

And then they pushed him in the pool.


	14. Enough

**Flip Turn**

**Chapter Fourteen: Enough**

* * *

Something grabbed onto Robin's shoulder. "What number is this?"

"Six," said Robin, turning around to face Gar.

"Oh. I was on number four." Gar smiled mischievously, letting go of Robin to hold the wall. "I can pretend that it's six, though."

Robin had to fight the urge to tell him that no, he couldn't pretend it was six—he wasn't _allowed_. He couldn't skip eight laps, a full quarter of the set, and think it was okay. But he could. Because everybody was allowed to break rules except for Robin. He didn't know why, but he did know that if _he'd _pushed Bruce in the pool last week…well, he didn't want to know what Bruce would have done to him.

At least he wasn't still in trouble for cheating. He'd apologized, and that was all he'd had to do. Except, the way Bruce kept looking at him, Robin figured that he was still mad, even if he wasn't going to punish him for it. And apologizing had hurt because he was still pretty sure that he hadn't done it on purpose, though Bruce seemed so sure that he was beginning to wonder.

It was time for number seven before Robin had time to think of a good answer for Gar, so he pushed off the wall and told himself that he had four laps to think about it. Gar wasn't really supposed to be in his lane—Robin kept lapping him—but he'd refused to be in a lane with girls, especially girls named Jade and Kitten. Robin didn't really care who was in his lane, except he wished that Gar would swim a little closer to the lane rope so it would be easier to go around him. It didn't matter who was in his lane; all that mattered was doing what he was supposed to do. And that meant that he somehow had to swim two more one 100s.

He did a flip turn and cringed as his feet missed the wall, quickly deciding that not touching the wall would be worse than turning around to touch it. Not touching was _cheating,_ and the last thing Robin wanted was for Bruce to think he'd cheated again.

Robin finished the set first, several seconds in front of Wally and Karen. He was faster than Karen, and he could always beat Wally at practice. Though it wasn't fair that he couldn't ever win where it mattered, in a race—he didn't know why, but races were harder. Races made his stomach hurt. Especially after Coach Slade… Robin shivered and stared at his toes.

"That was the longest set ever. Like, in the history of the world."

Robin pretended that he couldn't hear Wally, not looking up. It was far from the longest set ever, and he knew that for a _fact_, and he wished that people wouldn't say things that weren't true. He knew how to read workouts, and he'd seen what Bruce did every day—and this wasn't even close to the longest set ever.

Wally poked his knee. "Cat got your tongue?"

Reluctantly, he dragged his head up to look at Wally. Nobody should have a smile that big after swimming eight hundred meters, and anyway, Robin was _tired,_ and he didn't feel like talking. "No," he muttered.

When Wally answered, it was in a voice that he'd never used before. Ever. "You know what?" Eyes narrowing, Wally hauled himself out of the pool, sighing dramatically. "Alright, this is your _last chance_. Tell me what's wrong. Tell me what's _been_ wrong. Tell me what the one-eyed maniac said to you to _make_ it wrong. And if you don't wanna tell me, tell _somebody,_ 'cos it's gonna explode out of your ears sooner or later if you don't!"

Robin blinked at him. He tried to come up with something smart to say, but all the good things had been pulled out of him right when Wally had said that it was his last chance. "I—umm—_no," _he finally managed, not even sure if it answered the request. There had been a lot of different requests, and one word probably wouldn't be good enough, and he _really _wished that Bruce would give him something else to swim so he wouldn't have to keep talking.

"Fine." Wally shrugged. "Suit yourself, Smarty Pants."

He didn't do anything else, or even say anything else, just slid back into the pool and started talking to Starfire about how long he could hold his breath underwater. But Robin had a feeling that he wasn't finished with whatever he'd tried to talk about. Maybe he would forget, but Wally only pretended to forget things, not like Terra and Gar who _actually _forgot.

There were twenty more minutes of practice, and it seemed like twenty hours because Robin couldn't stop worrying about whatever Wally had decided. After they'd finished swimming, Bruce made everyone listen to him talk about Divisionals—and told them that this definitely wasn't the last time they'd hear him talk about it.

"So, it's basically the most important swim meet ever?" asked Terra, sitting on the middle starting block and hugging her knees.

"Not exactly." Bruce wrapped Terra's towel around her shoulders. "Just the most important meet of this season."

Terra stared blankly back at him. "That's practically the same thing as _ever."_

"It just means that it's against all the teams, not just one," Raven supplied, then looked hesitantly up at Bruce for approval. "Right?"

"Exactly." He smiled at her. It made Robin kind of sick.

"Yeah, and you score points at Divisionals—so we have to beat all the other losers this time—and if you're really fast you get to go to Championships, and if you're really _faster _you get to go to Classics." Kitten's eyes got big and shiny. She loved to talk about winning, and especially about being the best.

Gar raised his hand. "How faster do you have to be?"

"Way faster than _you'll _ever be," Kitten muttered.

"You don't have to worry about that right now, Gar," Bruce said. He gave Kitten a look, changing his tone sharply, "And I heard that."

Kitten tried to glare back at him, but it only lasted half a second. You couldn't glare back at Bruce. It wasn't possible.

"Now, unless anyone has more questions," he continued as if he hadn't been interrupted, "I'll see you all tomorrow morning."

"Yay, no more practice!" Gar yelled, then deflated as he seemed to suddenly realize that that wasn't a very good thing to say. "…I mean, _boo,_ no more practice."

Robin didn't feel like being harassed by Komand'r and her friends, so he decided to get far away from the older kids before they showed up. It was hard to make himself breathe slowly when he walked past Bruce, more than half afraid that he was going to be in trouble for missing the wall on the seventh 100.

He ended up having to hold his breath after he managed to whisper, "I'm going to go do my homework, sir."

Bruce nodded, starting to say something but never finishing because he had to go pull Komand'r away from Starfire, and then he had to demand to know what had happened, and then he had to make Komand'r do pushups for trying to yank out a fistful of Starfire's hair…and at least he didn't have time to yell at Robin for missing the wall.

He didn't really have homework, not in the summer—at least, not that he _had _to do, but Robin did it anyway. He liked math because it was easy and there was always just one right answer, every time. Besides, at least he was the best at math—he was pretty sure that none of the other kids his age could do algebra yet—and maybe if he kept trying until he was better than even people who were as old as Grant…maybe then it would be enough. It was kind of hard to concentrate, though, because Robin kept glancing over at Bruce every few problems, hoping that it really would be enough.

Swimming was important to Bruce, though, maybe more important than math—and Robin wasn't the best swimmer. But he _had _to be the best swimmer. He thought about what Kitten had said about scoring and Classics and winning, and wished that he didn't know as much as he did about all of those things.

He'd almost finished the third page when a familiar hand fell on the side of the table, and another gently took his pencil away.

Robin felt his head snap up, already wondering if he'd made some awful mistake and now Bruce was going to have to fix it for him. "Yes, sir?"

"Robin, we need to talk."

The words made him shudder. Talking meant lectures. "Don't you have to watch the big kids swim?"

"Practice is over," said Bruce. "And we need to talk."

When Robin looked, he realized that, yes, they had taken the lane ropes out of the water, and the pool had shifted back into splashing and screaming and bored lifeguards. But his watch said that practice wasn't supposed to be over for ten more minutes—and Bruce _never _forgot what time it was.

There was only one way to explain it. Robin must have done something really, _really_ bad, if Bruce would cut practice short just to _talk _to him. He couldn't think of what it was, but it must have been bad.

Taking a deep breath, he nodded and got up to follow Bruce, walking past Wally, who looked confusingly like he had right after he talked the concessions lady into giving him all the leftover candy, happy and successful, and a nervous Vic.

* * *

The tennis courts didn't have any people on them: it was way too hot for tennis, even in the afternoon. Bruce indicated a bench in front of the metal fence, and Robin sat without a second thought, trying to distract himself by wondering how many inches were between the bottoms of his feet and the ground. But when Bruce sat beside him, the surprise knocked all of the distraction right out of him. This wasn't the way things happened. Bruce wasn't supposed to look this—_afraid_.

"I'm sorry," Robin offered, staring at him and trying to figure out how mad he was.

Bruce sent him a disbelieving look. "You're _what?"_

"You had to end practice early to talk to me. I'm sorry for messing you up," he stated. _And for whatever I did to make you end practice early in the first place._

"Robin, you didn't—" He sighed, stopped abruptly and shook his head. "That wasn't what I wanted to talk to you about." Bruce turned slightly, touching Robin's shoulder and moving him until they were face to face. "What did Coach Slade say to you?"

There was no more air in his lungs, and he felt himself gasp but that didn't help, and he tried to scoot away from Bruce, but now there were two hands on his shoulders, and Bruce's eyes were wide and definitely still afraid, maybe even more afraid.

"Robin. Breathe," he ordered, voice calm—but the wrinkles in his forehead betrayed him. He was anything but calm. But somehow, it helped anyway, and Robin could breathe when Bruce told him to, and slowly the glass eye and the cold voice faded entirely. Bruce didn't say anything for awhile, as if he were afraid that Robin would forget to breathe again, but finally he repeated the question, a lot softer.

"He—he said that—that—" Robin shook his head, feeling his throat get tight, and he knew that yelling wasn't allowed, but suddenly he was doing it anyway. "Why should I tell _you_ what he said? You don't even _like _me!"

Bruce blinked, which looked completely wrong all on its own, but his face showed absolutely no sign of understanding. "Robin, what on Earth is that supposed to mean?"

He glared, and Kitten hadn't been able to glare earlier, but for some reason, he could. "You don't _like_ me anymore. You only like Raven, so you should just worry about her instead because she's all that matters anyway!"

"How could you possibly think that I—"

"You _hugged_ her," he accused, feeling all the betrayal of that day resurface as if it had happened five minutes ago. "You hugged her, so you like her more—and before that, she got what she wanted even though she just threw a tantrum, and she didn't _ever_ have to do things she didn't want to do, and you don't care that any of the other kids break rules and—" Robin took a breath, blinking away tears. "Is it because I'm not fast enough, so you found somebody else who was?" He waited passively for the answer, knowing what it would be and wishing it would never come.

For a long time, there was no answer, just Bruce looking more upset than Robin had ever seen, including the day that Raven went underwater and threw a tantrum. And then he said some things, some things that Robin didn't really hear because he was too busy focusing on the arm around his shoulders, and how that made everything better and worse at the same time, and then he didn't hear because he was _crying. _For a little while, he tried to make himself stop, but it was like when you leaned over the deep end too far, and you were _going_ to fall in no matter what you did. And when Bruce picked him up and held him, he realized how much he'd been shaking, even though he couldn't possibly be cold, but he didn't let himself think about that, just stopped trying to make the tears go away.

After awhile, he realized that Bruce was saying things again, and he'd stopped crying enough to pay attention. "…Don't know where you got that idea, but you have not been replaced, by Raven or anyone else. Robin, I—" The arms tightened around him. "No one could ever replace you."

"But Raven's—"

"Don't argue. No one could ever replace you."

It was simple, absolute, and more like Bruce than anything he'd said in the past fifteen minutes, so Robin was able to lean his cheek into Bruce's chest and listen to the slow, steady beat of his heart, and focus on making his own breathing right again. Somehow, it was enough.

"Okay," Robin whispered, closing his eyes.

He felt Bruce take a breath before he slowly repeated, "What did Coach Slade say to you?"

Robin hadn't been able to say it before, hadn't even been able to start, but for some reason he could say it now, sitting on Bruce's lap and not allowed to argue about being replaced. "He said that he was sorry about my—my parents, except I don't think he was really sorry at all, and he said that—" He stopped and had to remind himself that he was here, he was safe, there was no eye. "—That if I won the race, there would be _consequences,_ and…and Bruce, did you _really_ not tell me about a disgrace?"

"Disgrace?"

"Did my parents do something…bad?"

Bruce stared down at him, moving Robin slightly so he could look him right in the eyes, in the same way that he always did to make sure that Robin was telling the truth. "I have never lied to you about your parents, Robin. And I never will."

He nodded, fighting the urge to look away. There was nothing scary about the eyes, but…it was almost too _much_. It made Robin feel about two inches tall sometimes. "So Coach Slade was wrong?"

Bruce's eyes _did_ look a little bit scary, then—somehow, Robin knew that the anger wasn't for him, but it was still hard to look at. "Yes. He was _very _wrong. And I'm going to make sure he knows that. But first, you need to tell me exactly what happened."

The words reassured him where the look hadn't, and Robin squirmed out of his arms, reminding himself that he was too big for this—though he stayed on the bench, and didn't protest when Bruce's arm wrapped around him again. He didn't know why it made the story easier to tell, but Bruce was huge and strong and it made him feel _safe,_ and he wasn't being replaced, and Slade was wrong.

"Robin? Can you tell me?"

Robin smiled. "You give really good hugs, y'know."

He told him everything.


	15. Can So

**Flip Turn**

**Chapter Fifteen: Can So**

* * *

It was really hard to color on concrete. It was so bumpy and uneven, and it made the paper look messy, like you didn't really know how to draw even if you did. Worse, it was really hard to color at night. The parking lot had lights, but not nearly enough for coloring, and it wasn't quite _dark _yet, but it was trying to be. Terra was about to decide that she didn't care if her poster wasn't the best, because she'd tried, and it kind of looked like a pool, when you turned your head to the side. She'd just put in too many lanes. 

And anyway, she wanted to make her hair green.

Most of the kids Terra's age had looked unsure when a big girl brought out the spray paint, but Gar had immediately declared that it sounded awesome and that he had to be first. So the girl and her friends had him sit in a chair wearing a pair of old goggles that didn't work anymore, told him to cover his face, and a few seconds later, Gar had green hair. They told him not to take a shower before tomorrow. Gar giggled and said that wouldn't be a problem.

After that, everybody had wanted green hair. Except Robin, but he didn't count because he didn't even like candy.

That reminded her, so she tapped Vic on the shoulder when she got in line for spray paint. "Why can't we have sweets again?"

"Because it'll mess up your swimming," he said. "If you eat too much sugar, you'll run out of energy."

"But that doesn't even make any sense; sugar gives you energy," said Jade. "My dad _said."_

Vic nodded. "Yeah, but then you use it up too fast and then it's all gone."

Normally, it wouldn't have mattered this much, but Divisionals was tomorrow, and they weren't supposed to have candy. Or soda. For a whole day. That would be really hard. Normally, they also didn't have practice so late, but this wasn't practice. There wouldn't be anymore practices, not unless you were fast enough to go to that other meet that Kitten told her about a few days ago (Terra forgot what it was called). That made her kind of sad.

Pacing alongside the line, Gar ran a finger through his hair, grinning when it came back stained with green. "I think you should be able to eat lots of candy right before you swim, as long as you go _real _fast, then by the time it's gone, you'll be done."

"It doesn't work that way," Vic said apologetically.

"Guess you're gonna be a doctor when you grow up, or something, right?" asked Gar as he stared down into the tip of his marker.

Wally shook his head, interrupting whatever Vic was about to say. "Cyborg's gonna be a superhero."

Gar hadn't looked up from his marker. "Do you guys think that if I colored my hair with this, I could make it more green?"

"Dunno, but I'll help you," said Wally, snatching away the marker. He hadn't been standing in line, because Wally had probably never stood in line for anything in his life. He just kind of went where he wanted to go. "Maybe it won't even wash off, and it'll stay there until you're a hundred years old, and even when you're _dead."_

"Cool!"

When it was Terra's turn to get her hair sprayed, she adjusted the goggles carefully because she was kind of scared to get it in her eyes. She'd gotten shampoo in her eyes once, and that had hurt a whole lot, and she hadn't even been able to wash it out because she couldn't bring herself to put anything _else _in there, even if it was just water…

"Are you sure you know what you're doing?" she asked the girl with the spray can, twisting around in the chair to glare at her doubtfully.

"Yep," said the girl, stained fingers reaching out to turn Terra's head back around, one hand on top of her head, holding it still. She threw a green-streaked towel around Terra's shoulders, and then there was a cool mist all around her, together with a smell like nail polish.

Terra waited till the spraying sound had stopped, and then cautiously took her hands away from her face—she'd been holding onto the goggles to make sure they were really stuck on her eyes. "…Did it work?"

"Yep," the girl repeated, and when Terra pried one eye open she was staring straight into a mirror. And even though she knew that mirrors were just your reflection, the girl looking back at her didn't look like her. She looked kind of like a space alien. A really shocked space alien.

"Ooo, Terra's hair looks _good!"_ Gar announced, having shuffled around in front of her to look, very carefully because Wally was still coloring him with the marker. "It's 'cos it's so long—do Starfire next; hers is even longer!"

Luckily, Starfire was right behind Terra so it was her turn to go next, even though she'd cut in front of a few people because she didn't really know about lines (Wally knew about lines but pretended that he didn't). "Do people color themselves often on this side of the ocean?" she asked, eyes as green as the spray paint and narrowed in confusion.

"Sometimes, but usually not like this," said Vic.

"And how does the color come out of a can?"

For the first time that Terra could remember, Vic looked a little bit confused. He stared at the can, and at the girl holding it, and finally shrugged. "I'm really not sure, actually."

The girl didn't seem like she knew, either, and everybody looked pretty embarrassed, and just when Terra was about to go find Coach Bruce so she could ask him how spray paint worked, Starfire laughed and shook her head.

"But I want to try it anyway!"

Terra smiled back at her. Starfire was one of those people who reflected smiles, like the mirror that she'd looked into to see her green hair. She didn't know how the can would make your hair green and she didn't know why, but she wanted to do it. And Terra wished that she could be like that: eager and happy and never afraid of _anything,_ even the things she didn't know about. Being near Starfire was like having a light that warmed her all the way down to her toes.

When the big girl had finished spraying Starfire's hair, Terra realized that she'd been wrong about the green: it wasn't the same color as her eyes, because it wasn't quite as good.

* * *

"Hey, Raven, can I use the white paint-marker-thing?" 

Raven nodded, and handed Terra the thing that looked like a giant crayon that you used to write on cars with. It would wash off as long as you only drew on the glass, and Terra's daddy had said that she could do it as long as she _didn't_ get anything on the paint. Raven's hair was still its usual color; she didn't want it to be green. Either that, or she didn't want to ask if she was allowed.

Terra knew how to write her name: the only hard part was remembering which direction to point the "R"s. She did one in each direction and figured that at least one had to be right.

"That one's the wrong way," said Raven over Terra's shoulder, pointing to one of the letters.

Frowning, Terra stared at it and wondered if anybody else would notice. "I don't think I can fix it."

Raven shuffled from one foot to the other, then held out her hand for the giant crayon. "Maybe I can do it." It was halfway a question and halfway a wish.

"Sure!" She passed it back to Raven, stepping away from the window and watching as Raven colored in the letter so it looked like one, fat line, and then drew the little half-arch in the other direction.

It took her a lot longer than Terra was expecting, but maybe she should have expected it, because Raven always took a long time to do everything. She wanted it to be perfectly right. At practice, she didn't come in first a lot, but she always followed the rules exactly. But finally, she let out her breath and took her hands away from the window, as if she were afraid that moving suddenly would make it break into a million pieces.

"Done," Raven announced, something like a smile glinting across her face, almost too fast for Terra to see it. If there was one thing in the world that Raven did fast, it was smiling.

Terra looked at the window, arms crossed and eyes narrowed. Then she grinned. "Yeah, you couldn't even tell that I drew it wrong. Thanks!"

From the way Raven's eyes looked, you might have been able to use her like a flashlight if you'd wanted to.

"Do you want to write on the other window? I can watch," said Raven, zipping up her jacket. One of the strange things about summer was that you never knew if it was going to be hot or cold; the weather could change practically faster than Wally could swim one lap of freestyle—which was really fast.

Terra slowly shook her head, feeling a secret smile starting to wiggle its way onto her face. "I think I have a better idea," she sang, tugging on Raven's hand and pulling her to another area of the parking lot.

"Terra—wait—what are we _doing?"_

"Let's go draw on Coach Bruce's car!"

Raven stopped right in the middle of running, planting her feet firmly on the ground, yanking Terra back because she wasn't letting herself be pulled, eyes wide in horror. "Terra Markov, we can _not _draw on Coach Bruce's car."

"Can so!" said Terra, sticking out her tongue.

"Can not!"

"Can so." But it wasn't Terra who said it, because the voice was way too deep and way too old, and anyway, she would have _known_ if _she'd_ said it.

Raven's eyes were focused on something way above Terra's head, so Terra turned around to look, and she wasn't really all that surprised to see Coach Bruce smiling down at her, handing her another one of the giant crayons.

"Not on the paint, okay, girls?"

After that, Terra's smile was ten times bigger. "Not on the paint, promise!" she yelled, grabbing Raven's hand again.

* * *

It was only eight-thirty, and Terra wasn't tired at all—in the summer, she was allowed to stay up later, sometimes even ten-thirty—but maybe going to bed early wouldn't be such a bad idea, because they had to be at the pool tomorrow so early that she didn't think anybody else in the city would even be up yet. 

"But we never have to be at practice at seven!" Gar whined, leaning his forearms into his knees. All the eight and unders were supposed to talk to Coach Bruce before they went home. Which meant Vic didn't have to, but he was there anyway, sitting on the ground next to Wally and listening a lot harder than most of the other kids, even though he must have heard it a million times. Terra made sure to sit next to Raven. She looked like she wanted her to.

Kitten snorted. "Duh, you've never had to swim at _Divisionals _before."

"Thank you, Kitten," said Coach Bruce, in a voice that probably meant he wasn't very thankful. "As I was saying, seven o'clock tomorrow. Check your mailboxes before you come."

"Why?" asked Terra, shooting her hand in the air as soon as she said it.

"Because you might find something interesting."

Terra really, really wanted to know what the 'something interesting' was, but he wouldn't say, not even when Gar clasped his hands together in front of his chest like he was praying. It seemed like Vic knew, though. But he probably wouldn't say, either.

After he'd finally gotten them all to stop asking (and then to stop whispering), Coach Bruce continued, face serious. "I need everyone to remember to drink eight ounces of water after every race."

"That's a lot of water, though," Jade grumbled.

"And if you wait until you're thirsty to drink, you're already dehydrated. Eight ounces after every race. Understood?" He gave them a _look,_ and then everybody had to say that they understood. "And you know this by now, but listen to the Clerk of Course. There will be more kids at Divisionals than at any of the other meets—it will be loud, crowded, and you'll be waiting for a long time. Know when you're supposed to be swimming and listen for your name."

"We can do that!" said Starfire.

"I'm sure you can." Coach Bruce smiled. "And you can show me tomorrow. At what time?"

_"Seven!"_ Terra tried to yell the loudest when everybody said it at once.

"Alright, see me if you have questions. Otherwise, that's all I have for you. I want you all in bed by nine-thirty."

Raven poked Terra with one finger. "Sometimes I'm allowed to stay up till ten," she whispered, grinning.

"Yeah, and on New Year's I'm allowed to stay up till _midnight," _said Terra, getting excited when she thought about it. "…'Cept I usually fall asleep, but I never mean to."

Looking over her shoulder, Raven made a face, almost as if she wasn't really aware that she did it. "I gotta go now; my mom's calling me. Bye, Terra!"

Terra waved and watched her disappear into a silver car, one that was covered in white drawings—only on the windows, though.

"But what if, like, we're sort of in our rooms and being quiet and stuff, but not really sleeping?"

"Nine-thirty," said Coach Bruce, shaking his head at Roy.

Next to him, Robin yawned, blue eyes drooping as he held onto a lamppost with one hand. Then, he wasn't holding it anymore, because Coach Bruce picked him up, and normally that would have made Robin really mad, but he was probably too tired to care. Robin wasn't quite so mean now. Ever since a couple days ago, you could ask him stuff and he wouldn't snap at you or yell that you should have already known that. And he smiled a lot more.

Then Terra's mommy was saying that she had to go home, and Terra sighed because she'd been hoping to hide from her so maybe she could stay a little bit longer—swim team was almost over and she wanted to drag out every last moment, like how she always scraped the bottom of her ice cream bowl to see if there was any more left. Terra didn't remember going upstairs to her room that night: just tumbling sleepily into the car, the window cool against her cheek, and the funny, bristly way her green hair felt when it tickled her nose.

* * *

_Some of you may remember me suffering through Chemistry--I forgot to say last time that I made an A, and the lack of Chemistry resulted in me writing a lot. However, I'm leaving for school this morning, so expect me to slow down with all my projects, including this one, as I get settled in. Thanks for understanding and thanks a ton for the responses! I love reading them! --Azelma :)_


	16. Deliciously Unfamiliar

**Flip Turn**

**Chapter Sixteen: Deliciously Unfamiliar**

* * *

Breathing was harder when you were swimming a race. It was so much harder, even when you knew that it shouldn't be because you practiced it all the time. And anyway, she could breath _right now, _couldn't she, sliding out of the car until her blue sandals landed on the asphalt, then watching as her mom drove away to find a place to park. Normally, that would be easy, but it seemed like the only parking places were out in space somewhere. Raven knew about space. She could name all the planets in the right order. She tried to think about that as she made herself practice breathing, trying to picture the water around her as she forced the air in through her mouth and out through her nose. 

And head to the side. That was important, too. Thinking about where your head was supposed to turn made breathing even _worse_. Sometimes it made her mix up _in_ with _out, _and then she'd choke. Whenever she did that a few weeks ago, the tears would well up in her eyes before she even thought about stopping them; now, she'd just shudder and grab the lane rope, coughing until she got the water out of her throat. Coach Bruce would get really mad if the other kids held the rope, but Raven was allowed because she was special.

She'd been to this pool before, except she hadn't. It was Coach Harley's pool, but Raven was positive that last time it had been smaller. A lot smaller. There were cars everywhere, curving around the street and down a hill until she couldn't see behind the big grove of trees. And it kind of looked like the other kids had been planted in the ground like seeds, and now they'd sprouted. Because they were _everywhere_. Raven didn't even think there were this many kids in her whole _school._ And some of them were a lot bigger than anyone who might be in her class.

Raven was really starting to wish that she'd stayed in the car and walked back up the hill with her mom, but a hand grabbed hers and then she had to turn around to see who it was.

"Do you think it is early, too?" Starfire's eyes were open and alert as they moved from Raven to the millions of cars in the parking lot. "All of the others say that it is much too early for swimming."

Raven shrugged. "It's kinda early."

"Not to me," said Starfire. "I always got up early because I had chores. Well, me and Koma both had chores, except she made me do hers a lot. But sometimes, I would swim in the river even before the sun!"

Raven knew what she was talking about. She'd been up when it was still dark outside, too, and it was always to do chores. If she didn't make the kitchen clean enough, her daddy would make her get up when he got home from work so she'd do a better job, and it was always hard to go to school after one of those days because she kept falling asleep at her desk… She didn't say anything, just shook her head and stared wonderingly at Starfire's hand, which was still grasping hers.

After awhile, Starfire's gaze followed hers. "Oh!" She dropped her hand and laughed—Raven kind of missed it. "People across the ocean do not like for me to touch them. I'm sorry; I forgot."

"It's fine," said Raven. Not a lot of people touched her, and when they did, she usually wanted them to stop, but this wasn't bad. "Do you know where we're supposed to be?"

Starfire wrinkled her forehead. "Umm, it was somewhere near the very small pool, I think." A grin lit up her face as she focused on something and pointed, bouncing up and down a little. "There!"

When Raven followed her finger, she felt a little better because everybody under the tent was wearing green—and most of them had green on their heads, too (Raven hadn't gotten her hair sprayed the night before; it might have messed up her mom's car). They walked over to the tent, Raven practicing her breathing inside her head, counting out three seconds as she let the air out and breathing in _only_ through her mouth.

There was a _lot _to remember. And none of the important stuff was in the rule book.

* * *

Raven wasn't supposed to be over here, not really, but she wasn't swimming the relay and she kind of wanted to see Coach Bruce. He didn't even have to talk to her—he was way too busy for that, she knew. But just seeing him would still be good. Raven liked all the other coaches, except for Coach Slade, but he was staying far away from Coach Bruce, like he was afraid he'd get sick if he got too close, so it was okay. 

In front of her, a plastic spoon clattered to the pool deck, and Coach Harley said a bad word as she stooped to pick it up. She stared at it for a few seconds, shrugged, and stuck the spoon back into her yogurt.

Coach Ivy rolled her eyes. "That's gross."

"Five second rule," said Coach Harley, sticking out her tongue. She shoved the spoon in her mouth, along with way too much yogurt. "And I promise not to kiss you or anything unless you want me to."

"Don't talk with your mouth full."

Coach Harley didn't seem like she really felt like listening, because then she noticed Raven and kind of halfway choked on the yogurt before breaking into a grin. "Hi, sweetie. You're one of his, right?" she asked, shooting a sly glance at Coach Bruce and poking him with her heat sheet. She made sure that he'd heard before she continued. "Mornin', Brucie. Did ya find anything interesting on your way to the pool?"

From the way Coach Bruce took a slow, controlled breath, it looked like he'd found something, alright, but it wasn't something he'd wanted to find. He didn't look at the other coaches, just asked Raven if she was okay.

Raven nodded. "Yeah, I just wanted to…watch." It wasn't really the truth, but she didn't want him to think she was a baby.

"Just make sure you don't miss your event," he said, still ignoring Coach Harley as she poked him with the heat sheet again, this time on the back of his neck.

"I won't," Raven promised, stretching her swim cap over her fingers and watching the writing get distorted. She took a deep breath before saying the rest, trying to practice like she'd been practicing with all the other breaths she took. "But if I can't remember _everything _I'm supposed to about breathing, will—will you be mad?"

She didn't really think he would be. But something inside of her wanted to _know,_ and couldn't swim her race until she _did _know, and now that Raven thought about it, that was why she'd come to see him.

"…Brucie, are you listening to me?"

He wasn't listening. He was talking to Raven. Coach Bruce looked at her seriously, his eyes level with hers because he was sitting in his chair and leaning forward just a little. "Raven, I want you to try your best. That's _all_ I want."

It felt like somebody had taken a school bus off Raven's chest. And it was a lot easier to breathe that way.

But Coach Harley had had enough, and she looked really disappointed. Her pigtails were drooping a little bit, almost like they were frowning. "Next time, we're gonna need to use more toilet paper, Red," she muttered, crossing her arms over her chest.

* * *

The metal fence cut everything into little pieces when she tried to look through it. Raven was used to that. At her old house, there had been a metal fence, high and threatening because it was supposed to keep out the neighbor's dog (his name was Worthless, and he would bark all night like he wanted to eat someone). Raven used to stand out there sometimes while the dog slept, the leaves from the neighbor's tree falling around her feet, because it was _quiet._ There weren't a lot of places in her old house that she could go to find quiet. 

This fence was different, thinner, and probably wouldn't keep Worthless out. But keeping her eyes on it let her forget about the eight other heats of girls in front of her. She was in the last one—which meant the slowest, at Divisionals. Raven didn't really care; it mostly bothered her that there were so _many _other girls, and not very many that she knew. She wasn't good at talking to people, especially not new people.

At least Terra was a few benches in front of her. And she definitely didn't have a problem with sitting on the bench backwards, balancing on her knees so she could talk over the rows of heads.

"Oh my god, Raven, I forgot what lane I'm s'posed to be in!"

"It's on your card," said Raven, having to raise her voice a lot higher than she usually spoke.

Squinting at the pink rectangle in her hand, Terra laughed suddenly, raking a strand of green hair behind her ear. "Whoopsie. Lane two!" She smiled again, her eyes shifting slightly like they were trying to stare at the girl next to her on the bench. "I could have been with the good people, but I just didn't feel like going fast enough, you know."

"Sure," said Raven flatly. It was one of those lies again. Even though these kinds of lies didn't hurt anyone, Raven still didn't think people should do it.

Then, Terra had to go swim, and Raven stared at the ground and didn't talk to anybody else.

When it was finally her turn to step behind the blocks, Raven lowered herself cautiously into the plastic chair behind her lane, cringing when she realized it was saturated in pool water (which was kind of gross). The girl swimming in the heat ahead of her wasn't very fast. Raven was probably even slower, but this girl didn't breathe right at _all,_ and maybe she could at least win at that. As slow as the other girl was, she still made it to the other end of the pool much too soon, because Raven had to get out of the chair after that, and even the wet seat was better than racing.

Raven wouldn't dive from the blocks, or even jump. She'd jumped off the side, and she'd only just learned to do that. Her mom had shown her how last week. Rough concrete scraped against her feet as her eyes drifted involuntarily over to the coaches. She didn't look at Coach Slade.

Making herself practice breathing, she counted to three again and again inside her head—then stopped when Coach Clark waved at her. Everything was better as she waved back at him. It was kind of like somebody had wrapped a warm towel around her.

But then the starter was saying stuff, and Raven knew exactly what she was supposed to do, and when the signal came she _made_ herself push off from the concrete just slightly, pushing until she was over the edge and the water was coming up to her face faster than a truck on the highway…and when she slipped below the surface, it was hot and murky, but somehow familiar. The water was cloudy, so she could hardly see the black line that ran down the center of the lane like a scar, but she kept her eyes on it and not on the girls on either side of her, just like Vic had said last night in the parking lot.

Raven didn't remember about breathing until she noticed that she was looking at the side of the pool when she lifted up her head, not the other end where the timers were standing. It felt fluid, powerful and _dangerous, _the water millimeters from her mouth when she took in air, heart hammering somewhere between her ears, much louder than any of the screams from the pool deck.

But when her hand finally latched onto the wall, fingers slipping a little as she leaned into it, gasping, Raven decided that if this was what dangerous was, she could live with it. It was funny, being _sure_ of something like that. But good. Really, really good.

She was even more sure when she climbed out of the water and a towel launched itself at her face, Terra jumping up and down behind the timer, pink goggles balanced on top of her forehead in a way that looked like they'd have fallen off if they hadn't been firmly tangled in her hair.

"See, Kitten, I told you she would; I _said!_" Terra ran to Raven and linked an arm through hers. She leaned close to Raven, probably meaning to whisper, except Terra never whispered. "I even made her come down here to watch you, Rae-Rae, and she did that mean face, but I made her anyway."

Raven didn't even care about telling her not to use that name. "Thanks," she said slowly.

Terra turned back to Kitten, her words slurring together like they'd been run through a blender. "Wasn't it good, though, didn't she do it right?"

"It was pretty good," Kitten conceded, rolling her eyes a little.

Raven blinked at her, then remembered that she was supposed to be polite. "Thanks," she said mechanically, the word sounding strange when she said it to Kitten. Strange, but it worked, somehow. "I think I need to go talk to Coach now."

Terra nodded as she twirled a green strand of hair around her index finger. "'Kay, and when you get back, make sure you come sit by me, 'cos we're playing Go Fish and you're on my team."

Raven turned to leave, but she hadn't gotten very far when Terra grabbed her arm again, suddenly, and it made her jump a little bit, but the hand was too soft and small to be bad.

"Hey, Rae-Rae?"

She was going to _have_ to do something about that name. "Yeah?"

"Was it hard?"

Biting her lip, Raven stared at the impatient, blue eyes, trying to put the right words together. "It was a lot easier than I thought it would be," she answered at last, and the voice that said it was deliciously unfamiliar. What made it even better was that she was _sure _of it, of the words and the voice and the freckles on Terra's nose. Of more than that. Of more than she could name.

Raven didn't stop being sure for the rest of the day, not even when Terra rearranged the cards when she thought nobody was looking so she would have all the matches.

* * *

_Thank y'all _so_ much for your patience! Next chapter shouldn't be nearly as long in coming. --Azelma :)_


	17. The Real World

**Flip Turn**

**Chapter Seventeen: The Real World**

* * *

Vic didn't know if it was going to be good enough. But it would have to be. And anyway, it was too late now.

"Wha'cha doing?"

"Trying to see the results," Vic said, not really paying attention to the eager voice at his side—so much that he almost didn't realize that it was Gar.

Gar poked him in the elbow. "Results of what?"

He squinted his eyes at the bulletin board, but it didn't work; the thing was too far away, there were too many people around it to get closer, and Vic wasn't about to go pushing people out of the way. "Results of the meet so far. They post people's times and ranks up here, so you can see how you did compared to everyone else."

"What's a rank?"

"It means who was faster," Vic said absently, still trying to pick out his name on the rows of paper lined up horizontally, but he couldn't even find the event he wanted. He really hoped he wasn't going to need glasses. "I just can't see it from here."

Gar raised both eyebrows, the side of his mouth curling into a grin. "I can see it!"

Staring at him, Vic started to say something, except he didn't have enough time, because Gar had ducked between two older girls before Vic had time to stop him—and then, judging by the glares and protests from the crowd, was shoving his way to the front.

"What'd you want me to tell you, again?" Gar's voice yelled, though his face was lost in a mass of taller people. Most people were taller than Gar.

The simple, unqualified confidence nearly made Vic forget what he'd wanted in the first place, but then he made himself say, "Umm, find my name under the IM and tell me what the number is beside it. Please." It felt weird being polite when what Gar just did was the opposite of polite, but he didn't think leaving off the courtesy would make it any better.

It took a long, long time for Gar to reply, and Vic was starting to worry that he was just standing there, feeling bad that he couldn't find it, but then Gar's face poked out from behind Kara.

"Got it! You're five!" he said triumphantly. After a pause, he shook his head and added, "Well, you're not five like five years _old,_ but that was what it said."

"Thanks," Vic murmured, not really sure if he should be happy or not. He'd wanted better than five. He probably _needed _better than five, to be safe. He had to be number forty or higher, against _everybody,_ and there were five other divisions, some of them a lot bigger. Maybe it just wasn't good enough. Maybe _he _just wasn't good enough.

"Hey, you. Five's good," said Kara. She wasn't on Vic's team, and she was a little bit taller than he was—which wasn't too weird because she also looked a little bit older. Her bright red ribbon stood out against her pale hair. "This place still look the same after two years?"

"Yeah," said Vic, looking at the ground. He really didn't want to talk about two years ago. Or one year ago, actually.

_"Hi!_ I'm Gar and I'm six, and I've never been to 'Visionals before, but I _love _it."

Kara grinned, extending her hand to him. "I'm Kara, and I like it, too. This is a pretty good pool; ours doesn't have a diving board."

Gar looked scandalized. "How do you _survive?_" He didn't wait for an answer, just continued after a hasty breath, "And you'll never guess what was in my mailbox this morning!"

"What?" Kara kind of smiled with her eyes, a quiet secret that Vic definitely knew about.

_"Candy!"_ Gar halfway-yelled, breaking into a smile that was somehow a lot brighter than the sun in Vic's eyes. He paused for a moment, sobering. "Well, Coach Bruce said we're not allowed to eat it till after the swim meet, which is kinda mean, but _somebody_ brought us candy—and I think the same somebody wrote on my driveway this morning, 'cos that was there when I woke up, too."

"That's awesome, and I know you won't eat it until you're supposed to; you look way too responsible for that," said Kara, looking over Gar's head to give Vic that secret smile again. She knew what was going on just as well as he did, but neither of them would tell.

Vic knew Kara from school: she used to be two grades ahead…except now she was three ahead, because of the accident, and they hadn't talked much lately because she'd gone to middle school last year. She was _really _fast, especially in breaststroke—she was the fastest in the whole _state,_ actually. Coach Clark was her cousin, and she swam with him a lot, and though she went to a lot of meets unattached, she didn't swim for a team during the winter. Vic had asked her why once, before the accident, in the school cafeteria when they were both in line for milk; she'd said it was boring.

Several times, she'd come to visit Vic at the hospital, bringing math books and pencils, and they'd talk about fractions and long division until the nurse said that she couldn't stay any longer. It wasn't because they were best friends, or anything (Wally was Vic's best friend). Kara just helped people.

Gar nodded fervently. "Yeah, I'm super responsible." His serious face immediately switched into another grin as he waved at somebody behind Vic. "Terra! I found the coolest anthill underneath the fence, and you've gotta see it!"

Terra wrinkled her nose, letting go of Raven's hand from where she'd been dragging the other girl. "Eww, bugs are so icky. But we're gonna play Go Fish, and I'll even let you play with us—if you promise not to be a boy."

"But…I _am _a boy."

"I _know _that, but you just can't _be _one, okay! Then you can play with us." She looked at the girls at her side, and Kitten quickly nodded in agreement, with Raven looking really confused but slowly mimicking the gesture.

It didn't take long for Gar to decide that being a boy didn't matter as much as playing Go Fish. "'Kay, I won't; I promise!"

"Good," said Terra, linking arms with Raven again as Kitten indicated importantly that he could follow them.

Vic silently watched them slip through the fence, Terra shrieking when an official sprayed her with cold water, and Kitten yelling that that was only for the people coming _into _the pool, not going out.

"Five's good, you know." The voice pulled him back to the bulletin board and the girl standing in front of him. "And your time was good; I saw it. It'll be fine."

He shrugged. "I don't know. But it'll have to be."

Kara stared at him with one hand on her hip, head tilted to one side like he was a puzzle she was trying to figure out. "I'm still gonna do math homework with you whether you get fifth place or fiftieth. And long division is a little more important than Divsion_als."_

"But I already know how to do—"

"I'll tell Clarkie that we should go out to eat at the same place your team's going," Kara interrupted, blue eyes alive with an amused kind of sparkle. "I've gotta go swim, but good luck on the backstroke!"

"How'd you know that I was—"

"I'm a genius," she said solemnly.

* * *

Why did Grant have to be swimming backstroke?

He wished he could close his eyes and make the older boy swim something else, and even if it didn't work that way, Vic still wanted it to. A lot. Grant was thirteen, so he was several age groups back, but he was really close to Kara because she was thirteen, too, and she was in the last heat of girls because that was where the fast people were supposed to go. Vic tried not to focus on it, because his heat was next and he couldn't get distracted, but it was hard; he could hear them no matter how far away they were, and it kept reminding him of the locker room, with Robin looking even smaller than he normally looked, trapped between Grant's huge hands.

"She's not talking to me because she's shy. And I was gonna ask her out, too." Grant poked Kara in the neck. "How about if I win the heat, you kiss me?"

Kara didn't say anything to him, not even pausing in whatever she was saying to the girl next to her on the bench.

"Well, fine; you don't have to kiss me if that's how you work. You could always—"

Vic almost got out of his chair to do something, because the smirk on Grant's face meant that the end of that sentence wouldn't be very good, and it made him really angry, really worried, or both… but Kara turned around casually and said something to the boys behind her that was too quiet for him to hear. Whatever it was, though, it made Grant stop talking and everyone else nearby stare at him. Kara caught Vic's attention and rolled her eyes.

Maybe he shouldn't have worried. Bothering Kara wasn't a very good idea. Vic hadseen the way that she'd dragged the waterlogged, gigantic lane rope spool two weeks ago, like it was made of air.

"Heat three, step in."

Vic liked backstroke because he didn't have to dive, and diving hurt his legs. A lot. He did it anyway, but he wasn't very good at it and always started out just a little bit behind. He stepped into the water like he'd accidentally walked off the edge of the pool, then surfaced and reached up to wrap his hands around the metal handles underneath the blocks. A lot of the kids weren't tall enough to use them yet, but Vic was. He made sure his feet were under the water all the way, because you could get DQ'd if they weren't.

"Place your feet." The starter's voice, woven through the crackly microphone, pausing for a moment to wait for everybody to do it. He had no idea why they waited; most people didn't know what that meant, and the ones who did had already done it. "Gentlemen, one length of the pool backstroke. Take your mark."

Pulling himself closer to the handles, head down, Vic stared at the lip of the pool until his eyes couldn't focus any harder, feeling every muscle in his body tense.

The sound of the _beep _threw him into a different world. Up, back, down, ignoring the way the water stung his shoulders, underneath the water and back up again—and then he was swimming, chin up and head still, and the sunlight was blinding, even more blinding than the smile on Gar's face when he'd told them what was in his mailbox. The screams from the deck were muffled by the water rushing in his ears, but he pushed those out of his mind and focused on grabbing the water and pulling his body past it. He'd never been very good at making his hands point the right way in backstroke, and if he didn't concentrate on it, he'd do it wrong.

He prayed that he wasn't doing it wrong.

Vic didn't look around. Didn't look to either side of him to see how close the others were, just stared hard into the sun as it bleached his vision as he thought about where every part of his arm was supposed to go—and _elbows bent, _head _still,_ keep kicking even though it _hurts_…

The second set of flags over his head brought a surge of complicated emotions, both relief that it was almost over and horror that he'd mess up the most important part, but he shoved those away and counted, counted every time one of his arms went into the water, until he got to number eight and held his hand where it was, kicking until he felt the wall underneath his fingertips.

Vic let his feet drift to the bottom of the pool, leaning his head against the wall for a few seconds, letting its solidity bring him back to the real world, the world that didn't race (unless the race _was _the real world, and this was the fake one; he'd never been able to figure that out).

But he remembered what world he was in when he stayed to watch Kara's race, to watch her swim like she was flying, like she was swimming in her _sleep,_ like the others in her heat were standing still, turning over onto her stomach at the wall and flipping herself over with a splash that caught one of the judges in the face. And after she'd finished, winning the race by at least five yards, she waved at Vic as she somehow managed to heave herself out of the pool with one hand—and being good enough didn't matter to Kara, it never did and it never would. Maybe that was because it didn't _have_ to matter, not for somebody like her, but he didn't think so.

"Woah…" A familiar voice behind him began, then cut itself off.

Vic turned around to see Wally. To see Wally without anything to say, for the first time that he could remember.

"I agree," Vic said cheerfully.

Wally spent a few more seconds staring at the empty lane where Kara had been, mouth slightly open, then finally blinked, shook his head rapidly, and looked back at Vic as if he'd just been woken up from a dream.

"Okay, Garth is the _only_ one allowed to have those gill things!"


	18. Just Gonna Swim

**Flip Turn**

**Chapter Eighteen: Just Gonna Swim **

* * *

"Wally, I'm stuck!"

He looked up to find about a mountain of hair hanging over the top of the slide. Frightened, blue eyes stared down at him, the hair still a little bit green at the tips from last week, one of Terra's hands reaching down to him as if he were really tall enough to just jump up and bring her back down.

"You don't look that stuck to me," he observed, stepping onto one of the wooden benches to get a better look.

Terra shook her head, which shook the other pigtail free (the first had fallen out a long time ago, when they'd found the swings). "I _am, _though! It's too high and I can't get down!"

"What's wrong with the slide?" He pointed to the red tube attached to the platform that Terra was clinging to. It was kind of fun: the playground was way better than the one that had been here since two years ago, which had been all rusty with three out of the four swings broken. Then they'd put this one up, and it was way better. Wally wasn't really sure why they had a playground outside of the pool, but he figured it was to be nice so people would have something to do, since waiting to swim took at least forever.

Terra followed his finger, shuddered, and quickly turned back to him. "It's too _high_, and I don't want to go inside the tunnel."

He sighed. "If I do it with you, will you go?"

"Maybe." Terra pulled on her hair.

She almost hadn't finished saying the word before Wally had jumped off the bench and started climbing up to the slide, taking the steps three at a time, because he could probably find his way around here while he was sleepwalking. He pulled himself onto the platform with one hand, reaching with the other to take hold of Terra's before she could yank it away like she probably wanted to.

"'Kay, so now will you go?"

"I didn't say I _promised!"_ she wailed, face wrinkling up when she looked into the slide. "You don't even know if it'll let us out at the bottom, or some place _else!"_

"Yeah, right. Where else would it go?"

"China," Terra sniffed. "Or that place where Starfire's from. But I don't want to go there, either, because she doesn't live there anymore, and it would be lonely."

"You're really weird," said Wally, leading her over to the edge of the tube. "I promise that the slide goes to the right place, okay? And even if it doesn't, I'm going with you, so you won't be lonely anyway." He crawled inside the tube, keeping himself from going all the way down with his feet.

Terra didn't look so sure, but she slowly sank down to sit behind him, hands grabbing both of his shoulders and squeezing, and it really kind of hurt—sometimes, girls were stronger than you'd think—but he didn't say anything. "Okay," she said. "I guess we can go now."

Wally counted to three, felt Terra's hand squeeze harder on the last number, and then they were sliding down, down in the weird, red light, over the hot plastic that made his hair stick up, until the slide spit them out into sunlight and cedar chips, Terra struggling to get around behind him and onto the solid ground.

He grinned at her, lazily getting up and picking some of the cedar chips out of his shirt. "I told ya it wasn't scary—you wanna go again?"

_"No!"_

Wally sighed. "Well, you wanna go watch the big kids? They're swimming breaststroke now…"

Terra's big eyes got bigger. _"No!"_ she said again. "I _hate _that pool; yesterday was bad enough!"

Championships had been yesterday, and Terra hadn't liked it very much. Last Tuesday, they'd gone to the big, indoor pool for warm-ups and she'd tried to hide in the locker room—and she'd gotten away with it, too, until one of the big girls pulled her out by the arm. She said the pool was huge, loud, and scary—and that she hated the freezing water, and that it wasn't even worth it that she was going to get a medal for swimming the IM. The only reason she was here today was because her daddy was working at the meet.

Today was Classics. If you were pretty fast at something you did Championships, but if you were _really _fast at something you did Classics instead. Wally had been to Championships once, when he was five (it was in the short free, and Coach Babs had said that he was too little to do it, but he told her he was going to do it anyway—and he had been _right), _but now he was too fast for that.

Wally tried to think of something that they could do away from the pool. "Well…do you wanna go bother Robin?"

"…Sure!"

They wandered down a small hill the hugged the parking lot, trying to step around the big sticks that had fallen from the oak trees. Wally didn't look at the giant, wooden board behind the building: it just said what event they were on, and he already knew that because he knew everything about Classics. The pool was inside, and everybody who was swimming had to wait outside, but as long as you could remember the order of the events, you would know when you needed to go to the Clerk of Course. It wasn't like regular swim meets; nobody called your name. You were supposed to be bigger and smarter at Classics.

Their team was sitting under one of the first tents with the rest of their division, the grass underneath them covered by a blue, plastic tarp. Not many people were there because there were never that many, but Vic was, and Robin, along with some older girls that Wally knew pretty well. Once, he'd snuck up on Marissa, the one with the curly, brown hair, and put a spider on her shoulder. Then she'd said she was going to kill his dog, but Wally had just laughed because he didn't even have a dog.

Terra walked quietly behind Robin's chair, bare feet making crinkled indentations in the tarp, carefully so they didn't make any noise, her grin anticipating and full. Then, she reached both her hands around and covered Robin's eyes with them, shouting, "Guess who!"

He breathed in sharply, shoulders jerking away from Terra, and almost fell out of his chair, which was really funny until Wally remembered that it was almost always impossible to surprise Robin.

Terra didn't let go of him, though. "C'mon, you're supposed to guess," she pleaded, hanging over his chair to keep him from turning around and looking.

Robin's breathing was fast and shallow, and the way he tried to get it back to normal didn't seem to fit. "You're Terra, and I hope you know that that's a really immature game."

She stared blankly at him for a second, then shook her head as if she were shaking the thought away. "What are you swimming? Is it really long? Do they make you swim for longer at Classics, maybe?"

"Longer, like, more laps?" Robin asked, forehead wrinkling, and the voice sounded calmer but he really wasn't, not at all. "No, it's the same. I'm swimming—umm—short free, IM, and fly." Robin never forgot things. And he never had to stop and think about them, either. And he _never _said 'umm.'

"Butterfly is so _hard,"_ Terra breathed. "I don't know how I went all the way down the pool yesterday—I don't think I would have been able to if I didn't do that thing that Coach Bruce said about keeping your arms in front of you as long as you can. Even then, I don't like it."

"Fly's the best," said Wally, letting himself fall to the ground next to Vic, propping his feet up with the first thing he saw—Vic's cooler. "You'll like it next year when you get bigger."

Terra shook her head. "I don't think I'll like butterfly even when I'm a hundred."

"You might," said Vic. "When you did it yesterday, it was really good."

Smiling, Terra dropped her eyes to the side and played with the hem of her skirt.

"Wally, what happened to your hair?" Vic pointed, eyes bright.

He shrugged, trying to flatten it out, but the weird, fuzzy sensation didn't go away. "Slides always do it, but I don't know why."

"It's the static. The electrons get pulled away from your hair, and it makes it more negative, so it sticks up," Robin muttered mechanically, sinking back further against his seat, shifting fitfully and staring hard at the events written on his arm.

They'd already done the short free. It was kind of bad that Robin had had to swim it, too. He didn't like to race Robin anymore, because he'd get mad no matter what happened: if Robin lost, he'd stop talking for hours and go sit by himself, and if he won, he'd stop talking to _Wally _for hours and say that he'd just gone slowly on purpose. Wally wasn't sure which was worse, but this time he'd been half a second faster than Robin. Well, actually, it was _three-tenths_ of a second, as Robin had said angrily when they read the results printed on the bulletin board, but it was the same thing. He'd been faster than Wally at Divisionals, but he was a lot happier there—and people always swam better when they were happy.

And now, Robin looked sick, even when (or maybe _because)_ he was talking about static-stuff, kind of like he was maybe going to throw up, and that would be really gross, so Wally needed to make him get better, fast.

He poked Vic in the knee. "I need to tell you a secret. C'mere."

"But we have to sw—"

"In a _minute,_ Cyborg, now c'mere!"

Vic sighed and followed him away from the tent and towards the parking lot. The asphalt would be way too hot to step on, so Wally stayed in the grass, stopping just short of a little anthill.

"This had better be a really, really important secret, Wally," said Vic, tone filled with warning. "I'm not missing my event."

Wally nodded. "It is, but it's not really a secret. Robin's sick. We need to get coach."

A flicker of fear crossed Vic's face. It was too small for anybody else to notice, but Wally looked closer than most people. "But he's really busy, and he probably doesn't have time for—"

He rolled his eyes. "Coach always has time. You just don't believe me when I say that he does. And Robin_ is_ sick, because he always starts talking about stuff like 'lectrons when he's sick. Now, do you want to come with me, or should I just tell him?"

Vic sighed, but it was one of those playful-defeated sighs, and the way he gently turned his eyes up to the sky meant that he knew he'd lost. "I think it's _electrons,_ and I'm pretty sure this counts as none of our business, just so you know. Kind of like the last time you made me tell Coach Bruce about what happened to Robin at the swim meet."

Already starting up the hill, Wally turned and began walking backwards, mostly so Vic wouldn't get hurt trying to keep up—sometimes he went too fast, and Vic couldn't run very fast anymore. "You know what your problem is? You stay in your own business too much. If you'd spend more time in other people's business, I think everybody would be a lot happier."

"Well—I mean—maybe _you _should spend more time _out _of other people's business!"

Wally raised an eyebrow, pausing in mid-step. "Now I know why you never fight with people. You kind of stink at it."

* * *

"Wally, don't stand on the benches!" 

He looked down at Robin and rolled his eyes, stepping from one bench to the other and back again: they were close enough together that it was mostly easy. "You're not normal, you know that?" he accused.

Coach Bruce _hadn't_ been too busy. Wally had known that he wouldn't be. Not many people from each team went to Classics, so most of the coaches ended up with not much to do—except, Wally's coach obviously wasn't going to walk around talking to his friends like the others did. He didn't think that Coach Bruce really had any friends, probably.

But Robin had gotten better after they made Coach Bruce go talk to him. Even though he had to ask Robin twice to go talk, because he'd tried to pretend he was reading. Wally didn't know what they said, since he wasn't allowed to follow, but afterwards Robin wasn't stammering anymore, or forgetting things, and he'd lost that look in his eyes that meant he'd rather hide under his chair than swim.

"Maybe not, but you're definitely not allowed to do that," said Robin, who hadn't moved from where he was supposed to be.

"I don't have to listen—"

"Wally, don't stand on the benches." The Clerk of Course looked over her clipboard disapprovingly, head poked between the thick strips of plastic that covered the door between the pool and outside.

He sighed as loudly as he could and jumped down to the concrete—it didn't even hurt his feet. Then, he smiled straight at the Clerk of Course until she raised an eyebrow, said that she'd be checking back to make sure he wasn't "misbehaving," and disappeared back through the milky plastic.

Wally never misbehaved. He just made things more fun.

The boy in the center of the bench was familiar; he was wearing the same really shiny cap that he'd worn when they'd raced Coach Ivy's team. And Garth was probably going to beat everybody in pretty much the same way that he'd done it before.

"Hi," said Wally. "Remember me?"

Garth blinked at him. "Yeah," he said, eyes narrowing slightly, but not in a mean way. "You didn't like my swim cap."

"I said it was weird—I never said I didn't like it. You gonna win?"

"Maybe," Garth shrugged.

"You gonna break the record? Like, break it into little _pieces?" _

"Maybe," he repeated, dark eyes focused on the rusty diving board hanging over the deep end. "Mostly I'm just gonna swim."

It was kind of hard to talk to Garth. He didn't say much, and what he did say was just obvious, because _everybody _was going to swim. Wally didn't like it when he couldn't talk to anybody, but Robin wouldn't talk to him, and he'd tried talking to Joey, who was on the very end of the heat in front of them, but Wally didn't know how to talk with his hands yet. Last year, they'd been in first grade together, and he'd decided to learn, but so far he just knew how to say hello and stuff. He looked up at the high rafters stuck into the ceiling and wished that he was nine so he could swim with Vic.

The pool was really different from all the other pools that Wally had ever been in—this one was special, indoors and saturated with the smell of chlorine, so much that it had made Terra's eyes turn pink yesterday. It was long, really long, except somebody always put a metal bridge halfway down the lanes, all the way across, so they only had to swim as far as usual. The bridge was hollow underneath so the water flowed freely, and when he was five he'd worried that he could get stuck in there. When the summer was over, some really important, really fast teams practiced here. He kind of wanted to swim with them someday.

But he liked the locker rooms the best; when he was six, he'd found a roach in there, and it was still alive and everything. Nobody had wanted to touch it except for Vic, and after that they were best friends.

There were eight lanes in this pool, not six, so it seemed like Robin was a lot farther away when they went to step behind the blocks. Wally watched the first heat of boys swim, spinning around to look at the wall behind him every time somebody finished. That was something else different about this pool: the times were printed on a big machine stuck to the wall, huge and yellow, and if you were DQ'd, _everybody_ would know it because the machine would say. Joey got fifth place, which was pretty good, but Wally was faster than any of the boys in the first heat.

"You did good," he said as Joey walked by him. "Your backstroke was a lot better than the guy who won."

Joey didn't say anything, of course, because Joey hadn't talked since he was six—and hadn't talked about the angry scar that ran crooked from his left ear to the base of his throat—but he did smile. It wasn't quite as good as Wally's getting-out-of-trouble smile, but maybe he could teach him later.

Then Wally had to step onto the blocks, and he couldn't think about much else but the way the dark material coating the platform felt like sandpaper on the bottoms of his feet, the black cross painted at the bottom of the pool in each lane, the way the ripples from the previous race slowly faded as if they were going to sleep…

And the way Wally was absolutely _not _going to sleep when the tone and the flash of light like a picture being taken sent him off the starting block and into the water.

IM was hard, but Wally knew how to swim it. Some of the big kids tried to tell him to just think really hard about finishing the race, about touching each wall one after the other, but that wasn't the right way to do it. Wally thought about everything _but _the race, not letting the tiredness catch him as he wondered how they got the giant bridge in the middle of the pool, why they had a diving board here if nobody ever used it, what the people swimming on the other side of the bridge were doing…everything but the race.

He didn't need to think about it. The directions were written on his brain like the events written on his arm, in permanent marker, and it was easy and perfect and _right_ when he touched the final wall, hand diving deeper than it would in a regular pool because he had to touch the black pad with the yellow cross, the mat that hung over the rim of each lane that would stop the big machine on the wall from counting out the seconds.

Wally grabbed one side of the handle under the block, the one that people used for backstroke, pulling himself halfway out of the water so he could see his time. And then he felt his smile spread straight up to his ears, maybe even farther than that, because nobody had beaten Garth but Wally's time was good. And Robin had gotten second place, but Wally had taken off three seconds, so he couldn't even say that he'd gone slow on purpose.

Besides, Wally didn't really care. He just wanted a different color medal, and he already had a bunch of red ones, so white would be even better.

Getting out of the pool was almost harder than swimming the race—the water level was so far below the deck, and you had to put your feet on the rim and then get out, and sometimes that _still _didn't work. Garth didn't move until he'd shaken Wally's hand formally, but once that was done he didn't have any trouble climbing out. Actually, Robin didn't, either. He was probably used to this type of pool, Wally suddenly realized.

Wally searched the small set of bleachers for Coach Bruce, though it only took two seconds to find him because he was bigger than everybody else. He snatched his towel off the back of the white chair, slinging it over his shoulder as he yelled out, "Hi! I got third!"

"You also cut three seconds, which is fantastic," Coach Bruce said as he wrote something down on his heat sheet.

The thick rope that kept the swimmers from bothering the coaches (not like it would stop Wally if he'd really wanted to) felt slippery as he ran his fingers across it, walking towards the exit because he wanted to make sure Robin wasn't mad. He had to sidestep Kara, the big girl he'd met when they'd raced Coach Clark's team; she was kneeling next to a shivering little girl, trying to dry her with two towels.

"Yeah, I'm a fantastic safety hazard!" he called back to Coach Bruce.

He could have sworn that he saw Coach Bruce laughing, but it might have just been his eyes getting messed up from stepping back into the sunlight.


	19. Forever and Five Seconds

**Flip Turn**

**Chapter Nineteen: Forever and Five Seconds**

* * *

Some of the big kids had medals, but Gar didn't care because he had a trophy. Well, okay, so he wasn't the only one who had a trophy, but the medals weren't worth it. You had to go to an extra swim meet, for a whole day, like Divisionals except worse because it was a really big pool and inside and it smelled really bad and it was hot _and _there weren't even any good snacks there. Gar knew. Terra was telling him.

"And there's this _thing _on the wall that has moving, yellow numbers, and it counts out your time for you, and if you don't hit the black pad when you finish, it won't even stop!" She had her feet on Gar's lounge chair, propped up on her elbows in the chair next to his, a dark bronze medal on her lap with an American-flag-colored ribbon attached.

"So they don't have the guys with the stopwatches there?"

"Oh yeah, they have them," said Terra. She wrinkled her forehead. "They just mostly use the thing on the wall."

"Then why do they have them in the first place?" he asked.

Terra blinked, forehead wrinkling a little bit more. "I…dunno."

"They're for backup in case something goes wrong with the touchpad," said a familiar voice above him. Gar leaned his head back to stare up at Robin, who was fully dressed, wearing a blue shirt that wasn't quite as blue as his eyes.

"You're not swimming?" Gar asked, wondering if he could lean back far enough so his hair touched the ground. He thought about pointing to Robin's shirt, but that would have probably made him fall over, since he needed both his hands to hold himself up.

Robin shook his head. "There's no practice; why would I do that?"

Gar rolled his eyes—which probably looked really weird from upside-down. Robin didn't know how to swim for fun: he'd never been in the water to do anything else but practice, not all season, at least not that Gar had seen. "You're insane. In a smart way," he announced.

Robin had three medals. He just didn't seem to really care about them because he'd shoved them in the lifeguard's room with Coach Bruce's stuff right after everybody had gotten their awards. Maybe it was because he didn't break any records. Wally had broken a record in the short free; Coach Bruce had told everybody. Gar didn't really know what that meant, but figured it must make him pretty much the fastest boy ever (which made him about the fastest kid ever, since boys were faster than girls).

"I'm not insane!" Robin snapped, glaring at Gar and crossing his arms. "You can't just—"

Sitting up straight again, Gar spun around so he could see Robin; being upside-down was starting to make his head hurt. "Hey, I _said_ it was in a smart way!"

Robin's eyes shrunk into narrow slits. "You _cannot _be insane in a smart way."

"Maybe _I_ can't, but _you_—"

But the rest of what he was going to say got swallowed by a laugh because the way Robin's face looked when Starfire snuck up behind him and planted two hands on his shoulders was just too funny to keep talking. He jumped about six feet. Or maybe sixty.

Starfire didn't seem like she minded at all when he jerked away. "Who would like to play Minnows and Sharks?" she asked, looking from Robin to Terra to Gar with big, hopeful eyes.

"Ooo! Me!" Terra raised her hand, waving it around in the air. Then, her arm went limp like a piece of cooked spaghetti as she lowered her voice and pleaded, "Just don't make me be the shark, okay?"

Starfire shrugged. "I can be the shark."

A black braid swung back and forth in front of Starfire's face as Jade stepped in front of her. "No, _I'll_ be the shark," she said, a grin gleaming in the middle of her face that reminded Gar of that pink cat from _Alice in Wonderland_. It looked like she might disappear any minute, braid and dark eyes and green suit vanishing into nothing, leaving just her smile behind.

Sharks had lots of sharp teeth. And Gar had played enough games of Sharks and Minnows to know that you should _never _let Jade be the shark. But Starfire let her anyway.

* * *

"No, I'm safe; the drain is base!"

"We never said that, _Kitten." _

"Well, I said it! And that's how you're supposed to play; it's the rules!"

Jade rolled her eyes, reaching out to bop Kitten on the side of her face. "Well, anyway, _now _I got you, so there."

Mouth dropping open, the muscles in Kitten's throat tightened, and she looked like she wanted to shove Jade underwater and count to a million. "You are _such_ a cheater," she growled, aiming a gigantic splash her way that ended up catching Gar in the eye instead.

He was a shark, but that was okay because he was always one of the first ones to become a shark. Except for that one time when they'd all forgotten that he was playing. That had been really funny.

"Minnows in!" Jade demanded, as soon as the last person that they hadn't tagged yet had climbed out of the pool. "Kitten, go to the other side."

"You can take that other side, and shove it up your—"

"I _will _kick you," said Jade, eyes round and serious.

Kitten heaved an enormous sigh and pushed off the wall, sprinting freestyle to the other end. If she touched the wall, everybody still on the pool deck would be out. It was the best way to make people jump in.

By the time she got close to the end, everybody had already left the side except for Wally, who was just smirking down at her like he dared her to touch. At the last second, he vaulted right over her head and into the water, not going all the way down like a lot of people tried to do. He was just too fast. Nobody would catch him. Except maybe Robin, but Robin was sitting cross-legged on one of the starting blocks with his hands folded in his lap.

Gar tried to get Wally when he came close, but he'd slipped past in what seemed like no time at all, leaving Gar disoriented and empty handed—and he had both hands on the wall before Gar figured out what direction he was supposed to be looking in.

"Nice try, no cigar," said Wally, practically leaping out of the pool.

"I don't even know what that means." Gar made a face.

Wally grinned disarmingly. "Means better luck next time. I think your side of the pool is _that _way." He pointed to the other end, to which the others were already headed. Next to him on the deck, Starfire nodded, mimicking the motion. Somehow, she hadn't been tagged yet. They were the only two.

"Alright," said Jade. "Kitten, you're gonna go fast to the other side again. We've got to get Wally out; he's the fastest, so everybody else go after him except…umm…Terra, you get Starfire."

Terra bit her lip. "But I don't want to _get_ her—do I have to, like, hurt her and stuff?"

Jade flipped her braid back over her shoulder. "I don't care how you get her, just get her." Taking a deep breath, she raised her voice to a yell. "Minnows in!" And Kitten went flying over to the other side.

Next to him, Raven tapped Gar's shoulder with one finger. "Who died and made _her _Shark Queen?"

Gar made a face. "I told you before: _never _let Jade be the shark." He paused for a second, thinking about it. "Or Robin, either, I guess; he'd be an even worse shark."

Raven snorted as she pushed off the wall with her head still out of the water. "Yeah, right. Like Robin would play games."

Then she took a breath, closed her eyes, and dove down to swim under Gar's feet. She was smiling when she came up again. "C'mon, Shark Queen has spoken. Let's get Wally."

Wally was really fast, fast enough to break that record, whatever it was, but when there were twenty other people trying to catch you, you needed to be more than really fast. It took awhile, but finally Raven and Karen cornered him while Vic grabbed him from behind.

"Gotcha!" He was a lot bigger than Wally, so he could hold him easily. But Wally was faster.

"Yeah, yeah," said Wally, squirming out of Vic's grip and dropping underwater, dragging the other boy with him by the elbows. A few seconds later, they surfaced at the same time, Wally laughing and Vic sputtering.

"You're evil, you know that?"

Wally splashed him. "Just trying to be a good safety hazard." He glanced over at the starting block where Robin was sitting, some kind of sparkle in his eyes that Gar didn't really understand.

Robin didn't exactly smile, but he was having a fight against smiling, and he was kind of losing.

Nobody noticed what was going on at the other end of the pool until a delighted shriek made them all spin around to look. In the middle of the deck, dripping wet and breathing hard, was Starfire, her impossibly long hair clinging all down her back, some of it hanging like a curtain over her shoulders. Her cheeks stood out from the rest of her face as she beamed at them, waving with one tanned hand.

"I won!" she screamed. "Now I _will_ be the new shark!"

Jade threw a scandalized glare at Terra. "You were supposed to get her!"

Terra's eyes got huge and round. "I didn't want to hurt her, so I just swam close to her, and she asked nicely if she could go around me, so I just let her a little bit, I promise!"

"You're a moron," moaned Kitten.

"But she said _please!"_

Starfire cleared her throat, getting everyone's attention again. "I believe that I am supposed to say 'Minnows in!', yes?"

Jade scowled. "Robin, tell her this isn't fair!"

Robin, who had found his way off the starting blocks and had been watching Starfire like he'd maybe wanted to join in. Robin, who wasn't watching Starfire for much longer because Wally somehow appeared behind him and, in one swift motion, shoved him into the pool.

It was really quiet for the two seconds that his head was under water. Then, it wasn't so quiet. Robin started yelling at him, and from the way he was glaring, it looked like he wasn't going to stop for a long, long time—

Or at least not until Wally cut him off with a wave of his hand and a laugh. "You wanted to play; you just wouldn't let yourself. So I helped." Then, he pointed to Starfire as if she were the president. "You guys heard her! Minnows in!"

* * *

Somehow, they were at the pool for forever and five seconds, all at once. Forever because it was definitely almost dark by the time most of the kids had gotten out of the water (usually because somebody made them); five seconds because it didn't seem like dark should ever come this soon. Today wasn't a real swim practice—just when everybody got awards and stuff. It was also the last day of swim team. Forever. Or at least till next summer, which might as well be forever. Forever until he could see Vic and Roy and Wally—and Terra even though she was a girl. And Robin even though he was insane.

Gar didn't know if he could wait that long.

In fact, he decided that he _wouldn't _wait that long.

"So you guys, can we do stuff together before swim team starts again?" he asked the circle of kids at the table.

Raven scooted her chair a little closer to the table, eyes wide, and in the dimming light they looked almost bright purple. "We can do that?"

Roy nodded. "Sure, why not? Even when it's cold and stuff. Hey, any of you skate? We can go ice skating!"

Robin jerked his head around like there had been a false start and the starter had just fired the gun right next to his ear. Then, whatever strange look had been on his face faded away as he leaned back against his seat, offering a careful, "Maybe."

Coach Bruce hadn't been very happy with Wally for pushing Robin in the pool (even though Robin wasn't all that upset after he'd finished yelling at everyone) because it wasn't _really _cold outside, but Robin's lips had turned blue anyway. He'd made Robin change clothes—a long-sleeved shirt this time—and wrapped him in two huge towels. After he dried his hair. Robin hadn't complained.

Jade placed both elbows on the table, settling her chin gracefully on her palms. "Watch out, Harper. _I_ skate."

Roy made a noise a lot like the sound Gar's cat had made the time he'd accidentally sprayed her with a garden hose.

Starfire didn't seem to notice, her words starting to slur together like they did whenever she was excited, so it was kind of hard to understand. "I have never skated on ice before! We did not have very much ice in Africa, and I would like to see how it works!"

"We'll show you," said Vic. "And you'll find out how a lot of other things work, once school starts."

Gar reached over to shove him in the shoulder. "Ugh, don't remind me. I don't want to get up early."

Raising one eyebrow, Vic looked down at him and shook his head. "Umm, Gar? I hate to break it to you, but you've been getting up early all summer."

Well. He sort of had a point—but it wasn't the same thing, so Gar stuck out his tongue to make sure Vic knew he was wrong.

A huge shadow fell over Gar's chair, and half of Raven's chair, too. "Hi, Coach," Gar said, even before he turned around to look. There was only one person at the pool who was that big. Besides, the shadow looked like him.

"Hi," said Coach Bruce, smiling a little. "It's been a great season with you guys."

"You can't leave, you know," Kitten announced, features drawn into her mean-face, except this was a fake one. "You aren't allowed."

"I'm not?" he asked with the same smile. It made Gar happy. "Well, it's a good thing I'm not leaving, then."

Everybody was quiet for a few seconds. Finally, Starfire spoke up, "You mean that swim team is not _really_ over?"

Gar didn't think that that was what he'd meant, though he kind of hoped that maybe it was. But Coach Bruce shook his head. "Swim team's over for the season." He paused as Starfire pouted and looked down at her toes.

"…But I'll be back next year."

Terra had shot up before anybody else could react, toppling her chair over as she skirted around the table and latched onto Coach Bruce. He looked a little surprised, and kind of stumbled, but one of his hands slowly came to rest on the back of her head.

She looked up at him, beaming, not letting him go. "We love you, Coach Bruce."

Gar had never seen the man not know the answer to something before, but he definitely didn't know what to say after that. But then he didn't have to because Starfire got up and wriggled under his other arm, her smile a little more peaceful and a little less excited. And there didn't need to be an answer.

"Girls are _disgusting,"_ Roy observed, wrinkling his nose.

"Be quiet," said Jade.

Gar agreed with Roy, of course, but he didn't want to make Jade mad so he didn't say so.

Raven had been twisted her fingers together in her lap, biting her lip, and finally she took a deep breath and asked slowly, "Are you gonna leave now?"

There was something in Coach Bruce's face that Gar hadn't seen before. Or, if he had, he hadn't realized it was there. But anyway, it was there now. It took him awhile to answer, like maybe he couldn't remember the words, until he said, "I don't have to be anywhere if you don't," dragging one of the plastic chairs over next to Robin and sitting.

Robin looked at him, face a little unsure—like when the teacher asked Gar a question in school, and he didn't want to say because he thought it might be wrong. But he didn't end up saying anything, just pretended to be annoyed when Coach Bruce messed up his hair.

It wasn't over, not really. It could never be because swim team was friends and laughing and burning your feet on the pool deck, and the ribbons that Gar had hung up over his bed, and the green all over his dad's car that still hadn't come off, and the chlorine smell that he'd never get out of his towels. And the funny, fluttery feeling just under his chest that reminded him of Christmas and birthdays and candy all mixed together.

The feeling that made him think it would be a good idea to draw the strap back on his goggles and launch them straight at Jade's neck.

He hoped that the same feeling would help him run fast enough.

* * *

_One more time, I really want to thank everybody who's read and enjoyed this story, and those who've taken the time to comment. I was very hesitant to post this, and it's really helped me with "lonely coach who misses her kids too much" syndrome. I've had a lot of fun with it, and might possibly do some side stories if I have the urge to play with the kids again—though at the moment, I'm a few chapters into the sequel, so that'll be up soon. Till next time, y'all have seriously been great, and I'm grateful to have shared this story with such a wonderful audience. But for now, I think there's only one more thing I'd like to say: _

**THE END**


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